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- From: bskendig@netcom.com (Brian Kendig)
- Date: Fri, 19 Aug 1994 23:46:28 PDT
- Subject: how-to-tia.txt
-
- How to TIA (revision of 19 August 1994)
- by Brian Kendig (bskendig@netcom.com)
-
- I've seen a lot (and I mean, a LOT) of posts recently from Mac users who
- are completely baffled as to how to get TIA working with their Macs.
- Until recently, I was one of those baffled users. I spent some long
- hours puzzling over it before I finally got it working, so I put
- together this information to help other people avoid the same problems I
- stumbled through. It's really not a difficult process, but it can be
- confusing if you haven't done it before.
-
- Here are some steps you can do before you register for your fourteen-day
- TIA evaluation copy. These are things you'll need to do anyway before
- you can use TIA at all, so it makes sense not to start the evaluation
- period until after you've done them.
-
- Get a copy of MacTCP. This is the ONLY commercial software you'll need
- for any of this. MacTCP will come with System 7.5. but until then
- you'll have to find it through other means (it's not available on the
- net), or purchase it from Apple.
-
- Get a copy of InterSLIP. InterSLIP is a free product from Intercon
- Systems; it basically lets you run TCP/IP over your phone lines. You
- can download InterSLIP from any of the usual Mac ftp sites; it's
- info-mac/comm/tcp/inter-slip-installer-101.hqx on the sumex mirrors (my
- favorite mirror is ftp.hawaii.edu because it's quick).
-
- Get a copy of NCSA Telnet 2.6. This is available from
- zaphod.ncsa.uiuc.edu in Mac/Telnet/Telnet2.6/Telnet2.6.sit.hqx. Telnet
- is a good TCP/IP program to use to test whether your connection has worked.
-
- On your Unix system, find out what your name server addresses are.
- There will be probably one, two, or three computers set up to figure out
- what the real IP addresses are of any host names you use, and you'll
- need to give the numeric IP addresses of those computers to MacTCP and
- InterSLIP. Contact your Unix administrator if you need help with this.
- Also, find out the numeric IP address of the computer you normally log
- into, so you can tell NCSA Telnet where to find it later if it can't get
- to the name servers for some reason. (For example, here on Netcom, the
- nameservers are netcomsv.netcom.com at 192.100.81.101 and ns.netcom.com
- at 192.100.81.105, and I also jotted down the address of netcom7.netcom.com,
- which is 192.100.81.115.)
-
- Install InterSLIP by running the installer you've downloaded, reboot,
- then go into the "InterSLIP Setup" program. Select "New" from the File
- menu, enter any name for your new config, then double-click on the name
- when it appears in the main window. In the ensuing modal dialog, you'll
- probably only need to set a few things:
-
- - Your baud rate. For a 14.4kbaud modem, try setting this to 19200 (it
- worked for me); if that doesn't work you can always try 9600 later.
-
- - An IP address. You can enter anything here, since TIA doesn't set up
- an individual IP address for you. This field usually gets ignored. I
- set it to 1.1.1.1; if that gives you trouble since some apps try to use
- it directly, then set it to 192.0.2.1 which is officially defined to be
- "nothing".
-
- - The numeric IP address of one of your name servers (prefreably your
- "primary" name server), which you found a few paragraphs ago.
-
- - The "MTU Size". TIA documentation recommends setting this to 1500.
-
- Leave the "Dial Script" and "Gateway" set to "Direct Connection".
-
- Now, install MacTCP, reboot, and open its control panel. Click on the
- InterSLIP icon that appears there, then click on "More".
-
- - Set the radio buttons under "Obtain Address" to "Server". I don't
- think this matters, but this is what has worked for me.
-
- - Set the "Class" under "IP Address" to "C".
-
- - Under "Domain Name Server Information", enter the names of your name
- servers in the "Domain" fields and their corresponding IP addresses
- beside them in the "IP Address" fields. Click the "Default" radio
- button by the first entry in your list.
-
- Click "OK", then reboot to apply thee changes.
-
- Now your Mac should be all set! After it reboots, you can go about
- setting up TIA on your Unix shell account. The TIA documentation is
- very thorough and helpful about how to do this. Register for your
- fourteen-day evaluation license, and get to the point where you can run
- "tia" from your Unix prompt and have it reply "Ready to start your SLIP
- software." Note that if you ever want to stop TIA and get back to a
- Unix prompt, just type Control-C slowly five times, such that more than
- two seconds go by between the first Control-C and the last one.
-
- Oh, and make sure that your terminal program isn't set to automatically
- hang up when you quit out of it; you will need to be able to quit out of
- your terminal program without killing your dial-in connection to your
- Unix host. Right now, quit out of your terminal program then run it
- again, and if you find yourself still going as if you had never quit,
- then you should be okay.
-
- Okay. Now for the moment of truth.
-
- At a Unix prompt, run "tia" (or whatever the executable is named). It
- should reply "Ready to start your SLIP software."
-
- Quit out of your terminal program, open "InterSLIP Setup", make sure the
- name of the configuration you created earlier is selected, and click the
- "Connect" button. If all goes well, then the word "Connected" should
- appear at the top of the window. Note that as long as this says
- "Connected", you will not be able to run your terminal program, since
- InterSLIP has grabbed the serial port. My copy of Zterm will hang if I
- try to run it while InterSLIP has the serial port.
-
- Now run NCSA Telnet. Try to open a connection to the Unix host you
- usually connect to. If it fails to connect, then try again, this time
- giving the numeric IP address of the Unix host; if it fails with the
- name but works with the number then this means that you haven't set your
- name servers correctly in the MacTCP control panel or in InterSLIP.
-
- If you've run into problems before this point (InterSLIP doesn't
- connect, or NCSA Telnet gives you errors), and you can't figure out what
- the problem is, then post on comp.sys.mac.comm to ask for help.
- Describe exactly what step of the installation you got up to before
- things started happening funny.
-
- On the other hand, if things work for you, then you're all set!
- Dicsonnect from InterSLIP and go back into your shell account to
- download a copy of Dartmouth's "FTP" program from a Mac ftp site, and
- try to use that to download a copy of NCSA Mosaic. Being able to
- finally run Mosaic on your Mac is a fitting reward for getting all of
- this to work successfully.
-
- You might also want to set up InterSLIP to dial in automatically for
- you. FTP to ftp.netcom.com, and get the file
- /pub/mealiffe/netcom/tia-interslip-script. Put it into the folder
- "System Folder:Preferences:InterSLIP Folder:Gateway Scripts" on your
- Mac. You might have to change its type/creator to CNFG/ISLP. It's a
- text file, so you can edit it if necessary. Make any necessary changes
- to your Unix .login file so that you will always automatically get to a
- Unix prompt when you log in. If your prompt does not end in a percent
- ('%') character, then use a text editor to edit the script you just
- downloaded to put the correct character there (it tells you where to
- make the change). I also had to add an extra zero to the number after
- every "matchread" statement in the script (for example, where it said
- "matchread 50" I made it "matchread 500") to prevent my connections from
- timing out so easily before they had finished connecting. Also, make
- sure that the TIA application on your Unix account is named just "tia",
- since that's what the script will try to automatically run for you
- (unless you change the script).
-
- Go back into the InterSLIP Setup application and edit your
- configuration: set the Dial Script to "Hayes Compatible" and enter the
- Unix dial-in phone number, and set the Gateway Script to the script you
- just downloaded and edited. If all went well, then whenever you try to
- run any TCP/IP application on your Mac when you're not already
- connected, InterSLIP will automatically dial in for you and establish
- the connection. Easy as that. :-)
-
- Don't forget to post to comp.sys.mac.comm for help if you can't get this
- to work. Good luck, and happy SLIPping!
-
-
- --
- _/_/_/ Brian Kendig Je ne suis fait comme aucun
- /_/_/ bskendig@netcom.com de ceux que j'ai vus; j'ose croire
- _/_/ n'etre fait comme aucun de ceux qui existent.
- / Be insatiably curious. Si je ne vaux pas mieux, au moins je suis autre.
- / Ask "why" a lot. -- Rousseau
-
-