>"As for the IT folks, they seem hell bent on doing everything they can to >make sure that the Macs don't work."
We see this same problem at the school where I help out. The school itself is almost all Mac, and the workstations run pretty well. But the school district decrees that every school run NT servers and Cisco switches, and we are continually battling Cisco switch hell. Modern macs with 10/100 don't auto-negotiate the same way as cisco. Its annoying but sorts itself out shortly after booting, and the users have to mount their server by the chooser or an alias instead of the more convenient auto-mount on boot. Older macs (beige powermacs and quadras) seem to get into real trouble with the switch; as near as I can tell they can't get a valid appletalk address and default to one already in use. Usually I can restore the Mac by deleting appletalk prefs and appleshare prefs and zapping the PRAM, but sometimes only a clean system install works. If there is any kind of hub between the switch and the Mac there are no problems. So they got some funds to rewire the school and what did the school district do? Install more cisco switches, remove all the hubs, and blame the school for using Macs instead of their beloved pcs. At least they have not deleted any of the Mac software yet (although they did "accidently" delete all the shared files on the NT server!) -- MacInSchool is sponsored by <http://lowendmac.com/> and... / Buy books, CDs, videos, and more from Amazon.com \ / <http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/redirect-home/lowendmac> \ Support Low End Mac <http://lowendmac.com/lists/support.html> MacInSchool list info: <http://lowendmac.com/lists/macinschool.shtml> --> AOL users, remove "mailto:"; Send list messages to: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To unsubscribe, email: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> For digest mode, email: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subscription questions: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Archive: <http://www.mail-archive.com/macinschool%40mail.maclaunch.com/> Using a Mac? Free email & more at Applelinks! http://www.applelinks.com
