Path: news.uh.edu!barrett From: aberney@octopuce.alphanet.ch (Alan Berney) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.reviews Subject: REVIEW: QuickNet 2000 ethernet hardware/software Followup-To: comp.sys.amiga.datacomm Date: 28 Jul 1994 13:35:25 GMT Organization: The Amiga Online Review Column - ed. Daniel Barrett Lines: 218 Sender: amiga-reviews@math.uh.edu (comp.sys.amiga.reviews moderator) Distribution: world Message-ID: <318c6t$1is@masala.cc.uh.edu> Reply-To: aberney@octopuce.alphanet.ch (Alan Berney) NNTP-Posting-Host: karazm.math.uh.edu Keywords: hardware, networking, ethernet, Zorro II, commercial Originator: barrett@karazm.math.uh.edu PRODUCT NAME QuickNet 2000 BRIEF DESCRIPTION QuickNet 2000 is an Ethernet board with peer-to-peer networking software. The board is a Zorro II card. Non-Zorro versions are planned. AUTHOR/COMPANY INFORMATION Name: Resource Management Force Pty Ltd Address: 70-74 May Street St-Peters NSW 2044 Australia Telephone: +61 2 556 1316 FAX: +61 2 556 1524 E-mail: cbmaus!rmf!danielk@rmf.adsp.sub-org LIST PRICE $299 (US) SPECIAL HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE REQUIREMENTS HARDWARE An Amiga with a Zorro II card slot. Resource Management Force is getting a new board ready for the Amiga 500, Amiga 1200 and CD32. All these should be available shortly. SOFTWARE AmigaDOS 1.3 or greater is required. AmigaDOS 2.04 is recommended. AmigaDOS 2.04 is needed to use Envoy. COPY PROTECTION None. MACHINES USED FOR TESTING Amiga 3000, KickStart 40.62 WorkBench 40.35, 10MB RAM. (Workbench for Registered Developer.) Amiga 2000, KickStart 37.?? WorkBench 2.04, 5 MB RAM. Accelerator board. INSTALLATION An Installer script is provided. The installation itself is rather easy. I found it a bit difficult to set up of the network itself, as I had never done it before. CONNECTORS There are two connectors on the back of the board: one AUI connector (for so-called "thick-wire ethernet"), and one BNC connector for thin-wire ethernet. You also may order a 10BASE-T (RJ45) version which replaces the BNC connector. QUICKNET SOFTWARE - THE EPROM There is an EPROM on the QuickNet board which contains both a SANA-II compatible device and the QuickNet networking software. You may choose one or the other by simply changing a switch on the back of the board. QUICKNET SOFTWARE - THE MASTER SIDE... In addition to the software in the EPROM, there is a special software to be installed on the "master-server", which is the machine that is likely to be rebooted the least. You need to install the software only on this machine. The disk-sharing process for all "slave" machines is done completely from here. Each board has its own "physical" address which is used to recognize the board on the network. Once the "master-server" is completely installed, all the "slave" machines will display a requester when they boot, containing a "username" and a "password" field. Then, the remote machine may use any of the shared disks on the network just as if the disk were in the remote machine itself. The device recognises the ".backdrop" icons of the WorkBench 2.x and all the snapshots made. The network is completely transparent to the user! For each user, you may set up different access levels, different configurations, and different shared disks. You should do this only on the "server" machine. If you need to add a machine, you need to change only the configuration of the "master-server" to add the address of the new board in the list. On some diskless machines, you may boot remotely from another machine on the network. This is VERY useful to save money! No hard disk is required on the slave!! AREXX PORT QuickNet has an ARexx port. It allows you to send ARexx scripts on other machines in the network! You may, for example, pilot a slideshow on all machines of the network from a single machine. You could also use it in schools so the teacher may run tutorial software on the students' machines, etc.... SANA-II DEVICE - WITH ENVOY Yes, there is also a SANA-II device. I tested it with Envoy (not included in the package) which is another networking software package done by Commodore. Envoy works only on Workbench 2.0 and higher. The purpose of this review is to test QuickNet, not to test Envoy! I'll not talk a lot about this software, except that it works fine with QuickNet, is a bit easier to install, but is not fully transparent to the user. Envoy is a LOT slower than QuickNet, but the about the same speed of any other Ethernet board.... SANA-II DEVICE - WITH AMITCP/NetNFS Here again, I'm not going to test AmiTCP nor NetNFS in this review, but I want to point out a few things: I was able to set up an NFS network with a PC compatible, running a NFS master software (on OS/2). AND IT WORKED FINE!! Actually there is no Master-NFS available for the Amiga computer. On the other side, you HAVE to have a multitasking machine or a dedicated singletasking machine to run the master-NFS software (that's why I used OS/2 which allows multitasking). The installation of AmiTCP and NetNFS was a lot harder than that of QuickNet of Envoy, and of course I had to install NFS software on the PC compatible. The speed is also "as slow" as Envoy, just like any other Ethernet board. DOCUMENTATION QuickNet comes with printed documentation. The documentation is written for beginners, but there still are a few points that are not well explained (or not at all). But overall, I was able to figure everything out myself. LIKES - ARexx Port !!! - I only had to set up one machine. - I was able to boot with diskless machines. - The QuickNet networking software is REALLY fast!!! - I was able to set up a network even with other brands of computers. DISLIKES AND SUGGESTIONS - The manual could be more complete. - QuickNet doesn't detect the addresses of the boards by itself. You have to enter them manually. COMPARISON TO OTHER SIMILAR PRODUCTS The strong point of the QuickNet software is its SPEED. It is significantly faster than any other board I tested. Besides, very few boards have the "boot on another computer" feature. And NONE have that very useful ARexx port!! BUGS None seen... a few were corrected in a ROM update. WARRANTY 1 year. CONCLUSIONS This is a very good Ethernet board. It is fast, reliable, completely transparent to the user when using the QuickNet software, and perfectly usable in other networks with other machines than Amigas with its SANA-II compatible device. COPYRIGHT NOTICE Copyright 1994 Alan Berney. All rights reserved. +-----------------_+-----------------------------------------------------+ | Alan BERNEY _ //| aberney@octopuce.alphanet.ch -or- alan@gccs.imp.com | | Av. France 98\X/ | Fido-Net: 2:301/301.8 | | 1004 LAUSANNE CH| OctoPuce BBS 24h/24, 7 days: +41 (0)21 684.00.83 | +------------------+-----------------------------------------------------+ --- Daniel Barrett, Moderator, comp.sys.amiga.reviews Send reviews to: amiga-reviews-submissions@math.uh.edu Request information: amiga-reviews-requests@math.uh.edu Moderator mail: amiga-reviews@math.uh.edu Anonymous ftp site: math.uh.edu, in /pub/Amiga/comp.sys.amiga.reviews