Pull on your flame suit!

Well. Maybe not, at least not on this list. But I'll betcha that others
could come up with one or two uses for SAMBA that you missed, so it is
useful for a few other things. In fact, the quote below mentions serial
ports, which I find interesting.

And I believe that (hope your sitting down) SMB was * gasp! *Microsoft's
contribution, and what NT uses. For instance, see "What is SMB?" at
http://samba.anu.edu.au/cifs/docs/what-is-smb.html, from which I copied
this:
--------
What is SMB?
SMB, which stands for Server Message Block, is a protocol for sharing
files, printers, serial ports, and communications abstractions such as
named pipes and mail slots between computers.

SMB was first defined in a Microsoft/Intel document called Microsoft
Networks/OpenNET-FILE SHARING PROTOCOL in 1987 and was subsequently
developed further by Microsoft and others. Many of the documents that
define the SMB protocol(s) are available at ftp.microsoft.com in the SMB
documentation area.
--------

It goes on to talk about the developing CIFS (Common Internet File
System) standard, which is supposed to be the next incarnation of SMB.
Now it just needs a cool nickname,


>----------
>From:  Mark Landin[SMTP:[log in to unmask]]
>Sent:  Friday, October 03, 1997 9:59 AM
>To:    [log in to unmask]
>Subject:       Re: [HP3000-L] What exactly is SAMBA ?
>
>It was developed on UNIX, so i guess that makes it UNIX-based, although it
>runs
>on many other worthy platforms, including MPE/iX.
>
>It's a must-have if you want your UNIX or MPE/iX filesystems to be available
>on
>Win95 and WinNT systems as though they were native, or if you want to make
>printers available between the two worlds. Otherwise, it's not useful at all.