Network story, part 2 of 3
By Jason Romney
Suggested precede: Personal computer networking is all the rage. Jason Romney tells how to do it.
A computer network is an inexpensive way to let everyone's computer easily use scarce or costly resources. With a network, a printer or CD-ROM that may be physically proximate to just one computer on the network, is available to all.
A network also makes the most of hard disk space by allowing computers to share programs that need only be installed on one computer in the network.
Novell's Personal NetWare ($135 per computer) is a good example of the peer to peer network described last week, in which each computer can have equal access on the network to every other computer's hard disk and attached devices.
If your existing hardware is not too complex, Personal NetWare is easy to install. However, if you run SCSI chains off any of the computers you propose to network, you will need to ensure that your device drivers (in the config.sys) are loaded in the correct order. Also, if you load many TSR programs, you must ensure that you load as many into high memory as possible.
Striking a perfect combination of drivers in your config.sys can often be obtained only by trial and error or by long experience. If your system is complex, you may need to invest long effort - or consult an expert such as Edward Jozis (tel: 699 8844).
The order in which drivers are loaded is important because unless you arrange your drivers properly, either the network or your SCSI devices or both, may not operate. Alternatively, even if they do work, there may be insufficient conventional memory remaining to run certain DOS programs (especially games). Even Windows may baulk and tell you there is not enough memory to run programs.
Remember that this type of problem is a DOS issue and, ironically, partly independent of the overall amount of RAM installed in your computer. Even computers with 8, 16 or more megabytes of RAM can return this insufficient memory message because the key issue is how much CONVENTIONAL memory is available in the crucial 640K memory zone that DOS runs programs in.
Once your network is installed and running, Personal NetWare requires that you give each computer on the network a name. You may also set a password. Then you allocate a name to every resource on each computer.
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For example, if there is a computer on my network called Jason1, with a hard disk (the C: drive), I might call that hard disk ``Jason1drvC". A CD-ROM drive attached to the Jason1 PC, might be called ``Jason1CDROM".
After each network resource (be it a hard disk or whatever) has been allocated a name, you can assign network resources to a drive letter on each network computer. Printers, too, can be given names. This process is known as mapping.
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If the PC in your room has a floppy drive (A:) and a hard disk (C:), you might tell Personal NetWare you wanted the hard disk on the Jason2 PC in the next room to be known on your computer as the D: drive.
You might choose to take a CD-ROM drive in someone else's room, physically plugged into a computer there that you have called Jason3, and call it the E: drive on the computer in your room.
Effectively you would say that your local drive E: has been mapped to the network resource, Jason3CDROM (if that is what you have called the CD-ROM resource attached to the PC, Jason3).
In this way, through the Personal NetWare software (using the cables linking each computer on the network), your computer can ``see" whatever else is available on the network. It can seamlessly incorporate those resources as if they were its own, right there in your room with you.
New ways to harness the wonderful convenience of a network will occur to you all the time, but obviously a good example is that you can link up, say, your notebook computer, with a simple $400 pocket Ethernet adaptor connected to the notebook's printer port. This allows you to get large files on the network easily and quickly.
Novell's Personal NetWare includes both DOS and Windows software for organising your network resources. The Windows version allows you quickly and easily connect or disconnect to the network. When connected, you can simply drag named network resources with your mouse to the local drive letter of your choice.
Remapping of different network resources to different drive letters is easy. Likewise sending electronic mail to other network users. And diagnostic network information can be seen in convenient graphic format.
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Windows for Workgroups 3.11 can do much the same thing as Novell's Personal NetWare. However, one advantage of the Novell solution is that it is possible to make key network settings from Personal NetWare's DOS utilities, more flexibly.
You might note also that a patch must be obtained for the recently released and excellent PC Tools for Windows 2.0 (of which more later) for it to work with Windows for Workgroups.