255 - Lantastic Networks

NewDeal Technical Support Document 255

LANTASTIC NETWORKS

A discussion about NewDeal software and LANtastic networks

NewDeal software is network aware and has been thoroughly tested with computers connected to networks using LANtastic version 4.0 and higher. It might not work with LANtastic versions before 4.0.

To run on LANtastic, you must have NewDeal installed on the hard drive of the machine where you want to run it. You should then be able to access shared drives and printers across the network.

Unless you have purchased the network version, NewDeal software will not run remotely from a LANtastic server drive; that is, you cannot install standard single-user NewDeal products on a remote drive (on another machine) and then run them from your local PC.

Printing with LANtastic 4.0

We have found that the following settings, recommended by Artisoft (makers of LANtastic), will allow NewDeal software to print under LANtastic 4.0.

To change settings, run LANtastic's NET_MGR program, typically by typing

C:\LANTISTI\NET_MGR

Then,

Select SHARED RESOURCES MANAGEMENT
Select @PRINTER
Set Chars/Second to 32767 for laser printers, or 3000 for dot-matrix
Set Setup Delay to 60
Set Cleanup Delay to 120
Hit [esc] [esc] [esc]

Then type

C:\LANTISTI\NET LPT TIMEOUT 30

In NewDeal Preferences, choose Computer, and set your parallel port to DOS.

Printing with Simply LANtastic

Did you setup both PC's as servers? Assuming that you have done so, set up the default printer resource, @PRINTER, on SERVER1 for the first printer. Likewise on SERVER2, set up the default printer resource, @PRINTER for the second printer.

The default Output Device for each printer resource is LPT1 and both printers should be physically connected to LPT1 on each machine. Add the two sample lines below in the STARTNET.BAT file on each server.

NET USE LPT1: \\SERVER1\@PRINTER
NET USE LPT2: \\SERVER2\@PRINTER

This arrangement will maintain printer selection consistency across the network in NewDeal and your other applications that support more than one printer. That is, when you print to LPT1 from either station, your print job will be spooled to the first printer. Likewise, printing to LPT2 will always send the print job to the second printer. At print time, the print dialog box should contain a list of each installed printer driver in the drop down at the top. That's where you choose the printer for the current job.

File Sharing

NewDeal software does not currently allow multiple users to access the same document file, unless that file is set to Read Only. (You can set a file to Read Only in NewManager. Click once on the file's icon, open the File menu and select File Information then, Change Attributes.) If a user has a NewDeal document open that's not Read-only, then that document file will appear as a non-NewDeal document with a standard DOS "8.3" file name and a standard DOS icon to other users on the network.

NOTE: LANTastic depends upon DOS's SHARE utility to provide file-locking that prevents multiple accesses to the same file. THE COPY OF SHARE.EXE ON THE SERVER MUST BE DOS 4.0 OR HIGHER, OR IT WILL NOT WORK. If SHARE is not properly installed and configured, multiple users will be able to open a copy of the same NewDeal document simultaneously (even if it's not set to Read Only), but when anyone attempts to save it, the document will be corrupted.

Loading the LASTDRIVE command in high memory using QEMM or another memory manager has occasionally been shown to interfere with NewDeal's ability to recognize LANTastic network drives.

LANtastic and Floppy Drives

When running NewDeal on a computer connected to a LANtastic network, you may encounter the message "Error reading drive - Abort, Retry, Fail" if you have floppy drives on remote computers mapped as shared drives. LANtastic does not distinguish between hard drives and floppy drives, so NewDeal may not recognize these floppy drives when it starts up. Press F for Fail for each drive and NewDeal should start normally.

Lantastic Z

Early versions of NewDeal did not work with Lantastic Z (Zero Slot) networks, which use serial or parallel cables instead of network cards, but NewDeal works fine with standard Lantastic 2Mbit or 10Mbit version using NOS 4.x. Recent versions of NewDeal have not been tested with Lantastic Z.

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Last Modified 17 Feb 1999