[791] in OS/2_Discussion
Re: OS2/ Warp and ethernet.
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (John H. Kim)
Tue Jan 9 19:00:10 1996
Date: Tue, 9 Jan 1996 18:58:21 -0500 (EST)
From: "John H. Kim" <jokim@tuna.mit.edu>
To: kiesel@MIT.EDU
Cc: os2partners@MIT.EDU
In-Reply-To: <9601092258.AA13323@power-proc.mit.edu>
On Tue, 9 Jan 1996, Abram Dancy wrote:
> I can't really comment on receiving E-mail on a PC. My impression was that
> you had to leave the machine on all the time (and on the network) if you
> wanted to have email directed to your PC. I log into my Sun workstation
> from my Warp PC to read my mail.
Your machine only needs to be online all the time if you decide to get
mail at username@yourmachine.mit.edu. Even then, most mail servers are
smart enough to keep trying to deliver mail to your machine for several
days before giving up. You can disconnect at will, although ou may have
to wait several hours after reconnecting before you get all your mail
though. (The sender will probably get several "mail failed, retrying"
messages too)
You have three choices:
* Leave everything as it is and telnet to athena.dialup.mit.edu to read
your mail (yuck).
* If Kerberos support has been added to OS/2, you can use a POP mail
client to pick up your mail. I don't know if you can use IS's Windows
programs (which support Kerberos) under Win/OS2.
* Have IS forward your athena mail to anyname@yourmachine.mit.edu. Your
PC can then pick up your mail via SMTP (see below). Your mail will
still get sent to yourname@mit.edu, but MIT's mail server will hold it
until it can contact your machine. This does not require Kerberos. Be
careful to make sure people send mail to your @mit.edu address. If they
send it to @yourmachine.mit.edu, you'll be in the situation described in
the first paragraph.
Unfortunately, if your mail is forwarded or sent to your PC, you can't
read it via telnet. Your machine has to be connected to MITnet via
TCP/IP or PPP to pick up the mail. This is a concern if you're going
to be leaving MIT for a trip and want to read your email via modem or
telnet. It takes IS about a day to turn forwarding on/off.
> 1. Use Warp Connect. Network access is built in. You will be able to use
This is the best option. SMTP is supported. You may not like the
included SMTP mail program though. Many POP mailers can *send* via
SMTP, but not receive.
> 2. Use LAN Workplace for OS/2. This is probably what is on the disks the
> person who set up the computer gave you. This allows you to run Windows
> network programs from OS/2. (At least that's my impression.) It may come
> with OS/2 native ftp, telnet, ping programs.
It comes with native OS/2 ftp, telnet, ping, etc. Very buggy. I had
many traps with it on my Thinkpad 750. Especially ftp. I don't think
it supports SMTP mail connections either.
> 3. If you don't have Warp Connect, you can use FreeTCP. Warp has TCP/IP
> support built in, but was made for internet access from modems. FreeTCP
> includes drivers for network cards which allow you to get at the network
> from regular Warp. This is of perhaps dubious legality because it requires
> you to use a piece of an IBM product which was made publically available as
This is the second best option. SMTP is supported.
You could go to Windows, but on my TP750 and IBM CC Ethernet card, it
took me
15 minutes under Linux
40 minutes under OS/2
8 hours under DOS/Windows 3.1
to get TCP/IP installed and running. Laptops seem to use a lot of high
memory for laptop things, meaning DOS network stuff has to reside in low
memory, meaning less memory for your apps, meaning more things can go
wrong. I dunno about Win95. (Incidently, I did OS/2 first and DOS/Win
last, so it wasn't a learning curve thing)
___________________________________________________________________________
John H. Kim The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one
jokim@mit.edu that heralds new discoveries, is not "Eureka!" (I have
jokim@tuna.mit.edu found it!) but "That's funny ..." -- Isaac Asimov
