Hi David.
> Aren't some people working on network drivers? Are they at the
> stage where we can transmit and receive ethernet frames yet?
I'm not sure, but the sooner it's working, the better IMHO.
One good use I can see for networked ELKS is as a print server for the
network. Basically, all that requires of the operating system is:
1. Support for a single network connection. It matters little
whether this is ethernet, token ring, SLIP, PPP or PLIP.
2. Support for a single printer connection. It matters little
whether this is a serial or parallel printer.
3. Plenty of space for spooling documents to be printed - the
more the merrier as far as this application is concerned.
4. A userland print spooler daemon that receives documents in
a ready to print format and sends them to the printer.
Note that the following additional facilities would all be useful, but
NONE of them are required:
5. A userland print spooler daemon that receives documents in
Postscript and converts them to the format required by the
attached printer.
6. The ability to connect two or more printers to the same
print spooler.
7. The ability to handle two or more network connections.
Before anybody asks, I was working on the print spooler daemon, but
lost my work when my hard disk failed. Right at the moment, I'm in
no position to do anything on it, but when I can, I will try to do
something along those lines.
Best wishes from Riley.
* Copyright (C) 1999, Memory Alpha Systems.
* All rights and wrongs reserved.
+----------------------------------------------------------------------+
| There is something frustrating about the quality and speed of Linux |
| development, ie., the quality is too high and the speed is too high, |
| in other words, I can implement this XXXX feature, but I bet someone |
| else has already done so and is just about to release their patch. |
+----------------------------------------------------------------------+
* http://www.memalpha.cx/Linux/Kernel/
