This story is not unique by any measure. As most Mac users know, Macs work, and generally very well. Its just a shame that misconception and ignorance prevent otherwise perfectly capable managers from properly utilizing equipment they already have- and already works, and instead opting to push to replace it with untested, unproven replacements! The fact is, there are a handful of cross platform software, some of which has been around for quite a few years that make PC to Mac interoperability as easy as pie.

While I grant you that before Windows 3.0 there was no practical way for Macs and PCs to interoperate, each new version of Windows made connectivity better or more capable. There are two mainstream products available for PCs that allow for Connection into a AppleTalk network. The first is called MacLan (www.miramarsys.com) It is available for 3.1, 95/8, and NT. In a nutshell, it provides full AppleTalk services to PCs- all chooser functions are available directly from the explorer shell as if they are just another Windows resource, and provide for an AppleTalk file and print sharing of PC resources to be available on the rest of the network! Resource forks are dealt with in a rather primitive solution, but it does work- every time a mac file is written to a PC resource, Maclan writes the resource fork to a file with the the same name as the original except it adds a .res extension. The other PC-Mac software is called COPSTalk (www.copstalk.com) and is essentially an Appletalk and Appleshare IP client for the PC, with no server functionality. The peer to peer implementation is the same as Maclan, with all Mac resources appearing as if they are in the Windows explorer shell. Version 2.5 (the latest shipping version) offers full Appleshare IP 5.0 client functionality, allowing PC's to be fully integrated into an Apple Workgroup Server environment. I have used both products; they both function pretty much as advertised.

MEA CULPA

In my last column I wrote that Novell servers do not support long filenames or resource forks for Mac clients. Several readers pointed out that there is, in fact, a complete solution for long filename and resource fork support that comes out of the box for all Novell versions since 3.11 (at least). It's a feature called Mac namespace, and several readers expressed their satisfaction with its usability. It appears that this feature is also available to allow long filename support for other clients, such as Win95/NT and Unix clients as well. Forgive my ignorance, I was using Novell when long filenames were a pipe dream...

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