Sorry, I was not being clear. Since I have 7 IBM computers in my office, I obviously chose "DOS" boxes for most of my tasks. The take home message from the Internet/BBS conference was that 2-way communications between the Internet and desktop PCs seems to be more "off-the-shelf" for Mac. Only 1 commercial software package for an incoming and outgoing interface exits for DOS at this time and it must be used with a specific BBS system. All others will either be released later this year - or - require running unix on a dos box - or - involve yet another computer between the desktop computer and the Internet server (something one company calls a "nanny computer". The other approach is a Cisco router at $5,000. Just uploading from a Mac or DOS machine to a unix server that can be used for ftp or telnet is not difficult and there are many ways of doing this. The difficult trick is to allow an Internet user to telnet or ftp directly to and from the desktop computer. This is not a problem if you simply want to pass files along - why not just send it up to a unix box. It is a problem if you have programs on the desktop that you want your Internet people to access (such as many of the DOS or Mac-based BBS systems). You can use a unix based BBS and put it on a unix workstation, but then the system manager has to mess with unix and may not have the box on her or his desk. So far, the only people who have managed full 2-way communication to the desktop unit have been government (city, state, federal, academic) groups. They report a long and frustrating effort. The answer is not simple or easy or cheap. One of these Boards is running several 90 MHz Pentiums - so these are not "seat of the pants" efforts. The commercial software firms have focused on links to upload to the Internet because they think people will pay money to be able to do this. However, uplink software has been available for a long time, in commercial, shareware, and public domain forms. Putting ftp, telnet, etc. on the PC without having to run unix or involve more hardware is the sticker. Also, the commercial folks are just now releasing "Internet Connectivity" software for modem and serial port (thin wire) applications. Most have not written the software to support ethernet cards and fiber. One told me to tear out the fiber and go back to serial and wire! Cheers Jerry J. Bromenshenk [log in to unmask]