The PortShare(tm) Pro software enables your Macintosh to share serial communication ports (i.e. modems/printers/etc attached to those ports) with other Macintosh computers connected to your network.
The PortShare Pro can run only under System 7, but it can communicate with PortShare Lite installed on computers running System 6 or System 7.
-------------------------- Demo version ----------------------------------
This demo version of PortShare Pro has the session time limited to 2 minutes.
The manual can be compressed into few paragraphs (you can also use the Balloon Help™):
Installation (both clients and servers):
1. Place the PortShare Pro file into the "Control Panels" folder. Make sure that AppleTalk is on.
2. If the ARA software is installed on your computer, place the PortShareTask file into the "Extensions" folder. Without ARA installed this file is not necessary.
3. Reboot computers.
On Servers (i.e. on Macintosh computers with serial devices attached):
1. Open the PortShare Pro control panel.
2. Select the port you want to share in the left section of the panel.
3. Click the "Shared" box, enter the name for your modem (or what you have connected to this port) in the "Network Name:" field.
4. Repeat steps 2-3 for each port you want to make shared.
5. Close the control panel.
On Client:
1. Open the PortShare Pro control panel.
2. Click the New button to create a virtual port.
3. If you want to use non-CTB-compatible applications with a remote port, select the "Virtual Modem" button. In this case when a non-CTB-compatible application opens the modem port, it opens this virtual port instead. You can select the "Virtual Printer" button to redefine the printer port. For CTB-compatible applications you can select "CTB device" and enter a name for this virtual port.
4. Click OK. The icon for the virtual port created should appear in the left section of the PortShare Pro control panel.
5. Select a shared port you want to use from the list in the right section of the panel. If your network has zones, a pop-up menu should appear above the list. Select "AppleTalk Zones" from this menu to see zones. Select the zone with PortShare or PortShare Pro server(s) you want to use and click Open. Select the shared port you want to use.
6. Repeat steps 2-5 if you want to create several virtual ports.
7. Close the control panel.
When your communication port is being used by a network user, you can see his/her name in the "Status" field.
Any Macintosh can operate as a PortShare Pro server and as a PortShare Pro client: when somebody works with your port(s), you can use modems/printers/etc attached to other computers.
Some communication programs use the serial port in a rather "illegal" way and they can make PortShare Pro very unhappy, so:
SAVE YOUR CURRENT WORK before using a communication program with PortShare Pro the first time.
---------------------- Commercial Version ---------------------------
To see the list of distributors, open the PortShare Pro control panel and click the "?" icon.
