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Date:      Tue, 16 Sep 1997 20:18:54 -0700 (PDT)
From:      Doug White <dwhite@gdi.uoregon.edu>
To:        "GKN Chep SA (Pty) Ltd" <gknchep@iafrica.com>
Cc:        "'questions@freebsd.org'" <questions@FreeBSD.ORG>, Fay Glennie <GKN/HO/GLENF@iafrica.com>
Subject:   Re: your mail
Message-ID:  <Pine.BSF.3.96.970916201519.4310A-100000@localhost>
In-Reply-To: <01BCC281.645FC920@IT-INTERNET>

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On Tue, 16 Sep 1997, GKN Chep SA (Pty) Ltd wrote:

> We have changed one of our customer packages (similar to an accounting
> package) from DOS to Unix FreeBSD.  After many attempts at installing we
> managed to get to the thing going.  Luckily, thanks to the internet, we
> managed to get the dialup comms going.  This allowed us the facility to
> dial into clients machines and perform routine maintenance.  One of my
> new problems is that a couple of our customers have switchboards.  I
> have tried to find the answer on the net but have yet to find anything
> concrete. 

There isn't much we can do for you here.  You'll need to talk with your
client's switchboard/telecom people and see if they can issue an extension
number for the computer. 

> My only other option is to get the client to dial-up an ISP and then
> notify me of the IP address.  Once connected I can access his machine. 
> This is tedious and requires hi input from the customer side as well as
> an additional ISP account per switchboard client. 

Yeah, that's kinda sticky.  How about having them dial into one of your
machines?  Then you can connect to their box through the dialup link they
established.  (This assumes you assign a fixed IP for the dialup port,
which is the easiest way to handle it.)

> To install the new version of our package we need to visit each of
> customers, load the new operating system and then the package. 
> 
> We would like to issue our field personnel with an external CD-Rom drive
> and allow them, via the parallel port, to load the entire package.  The
> problem we are having is that there does not seem to be a driver to
> access the external drive. 
> 
> Can you advise me of the correct place to look for a solution (if it
> exists)? 

No parallel-port devices are supported at current (I think?  There was an
attempt to get the Zip ppa driver in there at one point, you'll have to
check with hackers).

There isn't a problem if they have a SCSI controller; then you can plug a
SCSI CDROM into the controller easy enough.

Doug White                              | University of Oregon  
Internet:  dwhite@resnet.uoregon.edu    | Residence Networking Assistant
http://gladstone.uoregon.edu/~dwhite    | Computer Science Major
Spam routed to /dev/null by Procmail    | Death to Cyberpromo




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