CAP Service to be Retired

OIT Network Systems
July 18 2002

The CAP (Columbia AppleTalk Package) service provided by OIT will be retired on August 26 2002. This affects the following services used by a small number of Macintosh clients:

• the "phoenix" AppleShare File Server, which provided AppleShare over AppleTalk access to OIT UNIX home directories

• the "Send Me PDF" print spooler (and the associated "Print/Fax Services" AppleShare File Server), which provided AppleTalk access to a service that converted documents to PDF format

• the "Campus Fax Gateway" print spooler (and the associated "Print/Fax services" AppleShare File Server), which provided AppleTalk access to OIT's outgoing fax server

Although these services were once used by many customers, there is very little use of these services today, either because alternative solutions are available, or because the old service does not function on modern Macs:

• Access to OIT UNIX home directories is available via OIT's Samba service. Mac OS X includes Samba client software. Another solution for all versions of Mac OS is ftp; ftp client software is included in all common Web browsers, and OIT also distributes the "Fetch" program, a fully-featured Macintosh ftp client.

• Converting files to PDF is supported natively within Mac OS X, and at a much higher quality than the CAP service provided. For older versions of Mac OS, Adobe Acrobat (commercial software) can provide this function.

• Apple dropped support years ago for the Macintosh printer driver needed to use the Campus Fax Gateway; the old software only functions on obsolete versions of Mac OS.