#Lantastic hints 4 MF
27 messages in this thread
Dear Noah or anybody with anything to say,
I'm in the process of putting a 3 user lantastic network together. I am
using the latest version 3.1/AI (adaptor independent) on 2 486/33's and a
486/50dx2 and my network cards are Western Digital WD8013EBT (now SMC). Any
hints on setup and how to make it all work best with 3ds, anipro, windows
etc., would be lantastic, I mean fantastic <g>.
Martin-
We use the AEX cards on all our stations (to avoid finger-pointing,
primarily!) so I don't know anything about tricks regarding your adaptor
cards. Whatever cards you're using, they will require IRQ's (0..15 on an
AT bus) and I/O base addresses, which must not conflict with any other
cards. Check the defaults on these particularly if any of the machines use
a frame buffer, sound board, or HardCard-type disk. I would look (or ask)
for any directions on re-setting DOS (SETVER command) versions for NET.EXE
/REDIR.EXE /SERVER.EXE.
There are some tricks to setting it up with Windows (some of which I think
we haven't done still!) If you call 1-602-293-8065 Artisoft will FAX you
technical bulletins on a number of helpful subjects: ask for a bulletin on
setting up with Windows.
Finally, we have had some moderately serious conflicts between Lantastic
and 3DS. We have gone round and round with Aritsoft on this and still have
no hard fix. Since I've bought the Phar Lap kit for IPAS, I've learned a
lot about Phar Lap memory usage and how it handles conflicts that I didn't
know before, and we are going to be testing some new Phar Lap settings to
see if that helps. I'll post a note if I come up with anything
interesting. I hate to put a message on a forum like this, but the truth
is we still have crashes on our LAN….(cont'd)
(Lantastic, cont'd)
..and we have had Artisoft engineers working with us for months and no
resolution. Others on the forum here seem to have had little problems.
I hope you're not the one to call when any mysterious errors show up,
because if you were that guy with us you would have spent a lot of time on
Lantastic/3DS problems. Since we have no techie scapegoat, we just live
with it as is and look for reasons in our spare time.
Yost Group says they use Netware Lite and have had zero problems. Have you
considered that?
–Noah
I'm actually taking the plunge myself and am getting a couple of AE2C cards
and Lantastic to see exactly what's going on in there. Now that we've had
Netware Lite up and running successfully, it's time to go on to some other
network environments and see what's going on.
– G
Gary:
I hope you also plan on examining PC-NFS…
Greg Pyros
Is the netware lite that you are referring to at the Adesk IDL? Is the
lantastic going to be on your system or at Adesk? If it's yours maybe we
can compare notes.
Yup, Netware lite is what we've been using up in Jamie's lab. I'm going to
be using Lantastic on my system(s) in my office. I'd be happy to compare
notes!
– G
Great! I am hardware idiot/wannabe so you might just know more about
networks than me <g>.
Gee! I'm getting Lantastic as well. We'll all compare notes…
Me too!
Funny you say that. I was running Novell lite and only had problems. I
changed to Lantastic (mix of 3COM and Lantastic Ethernet cards) and
everything have been as smooth as it can get in networkland. I would say
100 to 1 for Lantastic…
Gus-
DON'T TOUCH THOSE MACHINES! Just very carefully box them up and send them
to me in Oakland, and I'll send you mine<g>.
Do the conflicts you have seem to occur more often when a server is paging?
–Noah
>> Do the conflicts you have seem to occur more often when a server is
paging?
I've got none! When I was using Netware lite, the system wouldn't boot
after I intalled the Targa+64 drivers. I messed around a little and it
finally did. But then Windows wouldn't run. I spent a couples of weeks with
that and then I finaly gave up. Keep in mind that I write Windows VxD's and
NT device drivers for a living. Far from a computer neophyte…
Gus, sorry to burst your bubble, but I've got both netware and netware lite
running at the same time up here in the Image development lab at Autodesk
and I am running AutoCAD off of the network and have had no problems.
Autodesk has standardized on Novell for it's network, everybody is on it
and getting their mail off of Novell. What is really cool for me is that I
am able to access any machine in the lab including the render machines as
well as access any file server and printserver. all with a single autoexec
and config.
Now if I could only get NFS to run at the same time I'd be set. <BG> One of
the hardware hacks in Product support once had been able to setup his
machine to run PC-NFS, Novell and 3com all at the same time by having 2
network cards in the machine. This guy is sick. <G> Somehow he figured out
how to setup the interrupts so that both cards could coexist together.
Yann Bertaud – I.D.L. Autodesk.
At my office, the whole system is hooked up to a Novell system. For that
kind of environment that's just fine. Specially when you have 3 people 24
hours of the day taking care of the Network. I use Lantastic at home (6
486's plus a optical disk server).
We've been running netware lite for quite a while without Netware in the
lab. Autodesk just converted over to Netware about a month ago from 3com.
When we were running Netware lite we didn't have any problems.
Yann Bertaud – I.D.L. Autodesk.
I'd have to agree with you on that one. Although I've never tried
Netware Lite, Lantastic has served me with zero problems on 3 486's and 1
386. Pretty trouble-free.
— Steve, there's my 2-cents worth
Thanks for the feedback. I've already bought Lantastic as it seemed to be
the favourite peer-to-peer solution around. Haven't got even 2 machines
talking to each other yet (one server with 1 ide disk, 1 scsi disk, and 1
cd-rom; and 1 workstation with nothing much on it). I think I may have to
enlist some professional help on this, since the software seems to be
installed more or less, but the workstation can't login to the server.
Wasn't there some issue on dongle placement way back?
I don't recall a dongle/Lantastic problem being discussed.
When you say it won't log on, what error does it give? Does the
workstation "see" the server on the network at all? Try invoking NET_MGR.
Does that lock the computer it was called on?
–Noah
It says something like it's waiting for the server to come on line. I still
have to make sure I have a correct hardware setup (cables, terminators)
before I start checking the software. Do you a cd-rom attached to a server?
Is there a special way to load the cd-rom to avoid conflicts.
The dongle issue was something about not redirecting the parallel port so
that 3ds could find the dongle on the parallel port – I'll check the 3ds
readme.doc in case of a mention there.
Thanks again.
(I assume the server seems to install REDIR and SERVER without problems.)
Is the name of the server apparent to others on the network? Ie, can you
see its name when you propose to login from another workstation?
What kind of computer do you have? Did you try the "non-standard bus"
switch?
Scratch my previous message. I double-checked my hardware, jumper settings
etc., changed a couple of things and got the two machines talking. It seems
you have to put MSCDEX between redir and server to get the cd-rom included
as a resource. So far so good, now I'm trying to get the 4mm DAT unit in
the workstation to backup the server.
Interesting. I don't use MSCDEX but I assume its loaded as a TSR. We had
something that sounds similar on our diaquest 422 where changing the load
order helped, but it would hang-up intermittently anyway. Like a lot of
other things (am I the only techno-slob on this forum?) I never looked into
it further.
Glad its working. Everyone seems to be getting on the Lantastic bandwagon.
–Noah
Noah,
Got my third machine going on my Lantastic network today – yippee! No
problems to report yet at all (touch wood!) except my DAT 4mm tape backup
still won't back up the disk drives, but then it won't do that even when
it's *not* connected to the network so I can hardly blame the network <g>.
Makes me fell quite powerful having these 3 machines connected, I think I
need a network crash to bring me back down to earth <g>.
Good for you. I'm hoping that my problems may have been more along the
APATCH bug-line than the network.
Are you using a VTR controller? If so, how is that working?
–Noah
Apatch has been a "godsend" and I still have had no crashes since I used
it. I don't have a vtr controller, anymore (I used to have a loaner
diaquest dq422 but that's long gone) just a lowly po' man's targa+ 16/32
and a consumer vcr. All my broadcast stuff goes to service bureaus or post
production houses for laying to laser disk and/or tape.
Martin:
I have had problems with Lantastic and a graphics card that has 8 or 16 bit
ROM accessibility… the Vrams that we had had to be set to 8 bit… I
don't know if Artisoft has fixed this bug…
C#