E-Mail Configuration: Communicating with PC Mail Systems

Email configuration tips for an HP3000 using NetMail/3000 or DeskLink to communicate with PC based e-mail systems (through PC based SMTP gateways):

• It's often useful in NMMGR to ensure that you have both "802.3" and "Ethernet" framing enabled. HP3000s and HP9000s by default use 802.3 framing on local area network (Ethernet) lans, but many other systems, including many PCs use "Ethernet" style packet frames. Allowing both won't hurt anything and avoids odd problems connecting to various systems on your network.
• All the popular (and even most obscure) PC or Macintosh based e-mail systems have SMTP gateways available. For a listing of some of the gateways we know of, select here.
• Sending text messages between a variety of SMTP compliant mail systems is not typically a problem. Where things can get complicated is in the exchange of special attachments (i.e. binary data files). Non MIME compatible mail systems use a pseudo-standard called "uuencode" for encoding binary files so they can be transported via e-mail. There are sometimes problems with uuencoded transfers. If you have the option, choose a gateway that supports MIME encoding.
• Since most mail systems don't respond to the HP3000's PROBE requests on a network, you'll probably need to enter the names and IP addresses of PC mail gateways in NMMGR's NS directory or in NetMaint's known-host screen.

Native HP3000 Email Server