Putting Your Mac on a Bilingual Novell NetWare 3.115 Network

Last month, I covered the issue of teaching your Mac to speak and print Japanese. This month, we'll take things a step further and look at networking your now bilingual Mac into a bilingual Novell NetWare 3.11J network.

In line with the accelerating trend toward downsizing, an upsurge in the number of local area networks (LANs) being installed is apparent. Previously stand-alone or "LocalTalked" Macintosh users in the corporate workplace are now finding themselves having to coexist with PCs on Novell networks. Added to the complexity of maintaining such a cosmopolitan LAN is the need for making the LAN a bilingual one. Add to this the need to have the Japanese and English platforms share resources such as servers, printers, and modems across a common medium, and you'll see why IT managers have so many headaches.

Integrating a bilingual Mac into a bilingual Novell LAN is similar to the English-only process. (When I say "bilingual," I mean a network with both an English Novell NetWare 3.11 server and a Japanese Novell NetWare 3.115 server. For the Japanese server, NetWare for Macintosh 3.115 comes in 5-, 20-, and 100-user packs. The 20-user version typically sells for about Y194,000, and it includes all of the workstation and server software you need, with thorough documentation in Japanese.) The main difference between NetWare for Mac and NetWare for MacJ is in the doublebyte character set (DBCS) handling. Other than that, they are basically the same. For those wielding only a rudimentary grasp of the local language, it might be advisable to have a Japanese colleague with a reasonably sound computing background help you with the installation. Otherwise, you invite problems of nightmarish proportions and the wrath of your network users.

Client and server setup Setting your Mac clients up as workstations with NetWare is easily done, even in the Japanese environment. After installing both the NIC and the Novell for MacJ Workstation software, select Ethertalk under the Network Control Panel. Click on the Appleshare icon in the Chooser, and the zones and network volumes will be displayed in English.

On the server side, too, the process of installing Novell for Macintosh, loading re-entrant drivers, binding protocols, and loading Apple namespace, file, and printing services on a Novell server running 3.115 is very much the same as the procedure for the English version. In fact, it almost installs itself.

Printing

Last month, the Help Desk covered the topic of printing Japanese from a bilingual Mac. What it didn't cover is doing the same via a Novell LAN. Take a look around at what most foreign companies do for their bilingual LAN printing solutions, and you'll discover that most use a similar solution. They will separate the jobs by having one or more dedicated Japanese printers, while leaving the other printers for English only. The reasons for this are logical. It means that the problems associated with printing Japanese can be solved independently, and the printers can be configured for optimum performance.

Last month, I recommended some printers for the specialized task of bilingual printing, one being the LaserWriter 610. Connecting it to a stand-alone is simple, but how does one connect it on a star topology 10 Base-T Ethernet Novell NetWare 3.115 network? The 610 does not have a built-in Ethernet interface, but putting printers with the LocalTalk 8pin Mini-DIN interface on an Ethernet network is easily done with either the Dayna Etherprint Box or the highly recommended Farallon Etherwave. Both of these devices act as bridges, enabling more than one LocalTalk printer to be accessed by the Ethernet networks.

For printers having built-in Ethernet support, my personal favorite is Hewlett Packard's excellent 4/4M, soon to be replaced by the 4M+. The 4M+ has the excellent JetDirect networking card included and has ports for Ethernet, Token Ring, and LocalTalk. It has 600-dpi resolution (effectively 1200 dpi with HP's Resolution Enhancer), which is good for printing Japanese fonts, output of 12 pages per minute, 6MB of RAM, and Adobe's Level 2 PostScript. I would recommend this for those with a smaller network where there is no problem in sharing a printer between Macs and PCs.

For buyers who don't mind a decrease in performance for a concomitant decrease in price, the HP 4L is a sound choice if you are using TrueType fonts to print Japanese. The HP 4L has a mini-DIN port for AppleTalk, parallel and serial ports, 1MB of RAM, and 300-dpi resolution (effectively 600 dpi with HP's Resolution Enhancer).

You can attach the 4L printer to the network in one of two ways. The first is via an EtherNet-l,ocalTalk bridge. The other is via an Intel Netport to the parallel port. The Netport will be the faster of the two, but the bridge option will be cheaper and allow other LocalTalk-only printers to be attached. Printing doublebyte characters (Japanese) will happen slowly with the 4L, because the fonts are being downloaded and it only has 1MB of memory. Consider upgrading the RAM to its meager 2MB limit for faster printing.

When managing your printing resources, fast and efficient fault-finding should be paramount. Set up separate print queues to act as delimiters for the type of printing being done, Japanese or English. One reason for this is so users printing English don't have to wait for the more time-consuming Japanese print jobs. This is especially true if one user is downloading many different fonts to a printer that doesn't have its own, such as the HP 4L.

Administration and planning

All in all, there is no great leap from Novell NetWare 3.11 to 3.115 where your Mac workstation is concerned. The real difference is in the way you manage and distribute your resources. Many networks are predominately English, with Japanese being used only some of the time. For these, printing resources will be biased toward a printer that performs better in English, one with only adequate Japanese ability. Need a printer for both purposes equally? Then be prepared to make a compromise. The situation is very similar to managing bilingual networks and systems with multiple platforms.

Novell recommends that volume server, user, and printer names not be entered in kanji characters under Novell NetWare 3.115 (entering the server name in kanji is impossible anyway). Users without DBCS-enabled workstations would find it impossible to understand what resources they have available when looking at the LAN. And if your network is part of an internet that has domains in other countries, the problem is compounded. Imagine the concern of your head office network administrator when those rubbish characters start appearing on his NCC.

So, what are the pros and cons of having your Mac on a bilingual Novell network? The up side is that with Novell you have speed, reliability, and security. Novell NetWare 3.115 gives you all this, and Japanese language support; your backups will be centralized and easier to maintain. The down side is the increased complexity and expense.

The decisions are ultimately up to the network administrator. The die-hard Mac users on the network are a hard bunch to please, and the extra responsibility of integrating them as seamlessly as possible into a bilingual Novell NetWare LAN is a full-time job.

Mac Tip

If you don't have System Switcher (as described in last month's Mac Help Desk), there is another way to reboot your Macintosh so that it can start up with either the English or Japanese System. The Macintosh always looks for its boot information from a folder that contains both the Finder and System files. This is usually the System Folder. If there is more than one folder containing both Finder and System files (of different versions), the Mac will boot from the folder last opened and closed.

Knowing this, you can use the following work-around to determine which version of the System you will boot from. (Before you start experimenting, be sure to have a working copy of your System diskette, just in case your Mac gets confused and can't locate either of the Finder files. This could happen, for example, if you make the changes mentioned below but fail to close the new bootable System folder after opening it).

Let's assume that you have English and Japanese versions of System 6.0.7 and are Funning in Japanese. To switch to English:

• 1. Make a folder inside the Japanese System folder called anything you like (such as YEWIP").
• 2. Drag the Japanese System Finder file into TEMP.
• 3. Go to the English System folder, and open and close it so that it becomes the last System folder accessed. (Don't forget to close the folder -- this is important!)
• 4. Reboot your machine. It will restart from the English System. To return to booting from the Japanese System, follow a similar procedure. Make a TEMP folder in the English System folder and move the English System Finder file into TEMP. Then go back to the Japanese System folder, open TEMP and drag the Finder back into the Japanese System folder, then close it and reboot.