Re: WTB 1 x specialix - modular terminal adapter

From: Bill Vermillion (bv_at_wjv.com)
Date: 03/25/05 

Date: Fri, 25 Mar 2005 06:55:03 GMT

In article <gCL0e.10893$C7.426@news-server.bigpond.net.au>,
dba <usenet@databack.com.au> wrote:
>
>"Bill Vermillion" <bv@wjv.com> wrote in message news:IDw0v0.1EBD@wjv.com...
>> In article <OgK0e.10805$C7.2153@news-server.bigpond.net.au>,
>> dba <usenet@databack.com.au> wrote:
>>>
>>>"Tom Parsons" <sconews@tegan.com> wrote in message
>>>news:20050322122013.21840@tegan.com...
>>>> dba enscribed:
>>>> | X-RFC2646: Format=Flowed; Original
>>>> | Message-ID: <OnL%d.6553$C7.1893@news-server.bigpond.net.au>
>>>> | Date: Tue, 22 Mar 2005 02:26:54 GMT
>>>> | NNTP-Posting-Host: 144.131.65.76
>>>> | X-Complaints-To: abuse@bigpond.net.au
>>>> | X-Trace: news-server.bigpond.net.au 1111458414 144.131.65.76 (Tue, 22
>>>> Mar 2005 13:26:54 EST)
>>>> | NNTP-Posting-Date: Tue, 22 Mar 2005 13:26:54 EST
>>>> | Organization: BigPond Internet Services
>>>> | Xref: jpradley.jpr.com comp.unix.sco.misc:86646
>>>> |
>>>> | anyone have one of these units?
>>>> | 8 port or bigger?
>>>> |
>>>> | I'm in NSW Australia
>>>>
>>>> I've several (48 ports minimum) coming out of service within 7 days. I
>>>> don't remember the model but MIO comes to mind and Bill is correct,
>>>> there
>>>> are many different versions of this, at least some non-interchangeable.
>>>> I'll have a couple PCI cards also.
>>>> --
>>>> ==========================================================================
>>>> Tom Parsons tom@tegan.com
>>>> ==========================================================================
>>>
>>>
>>>Thanks.
>>>I'll find out the model of the card on Monday,
>>>fwiw it's in a dell poweredge running sco openserver box.
>>>The non PnP version 3.xx (iirc)
>>
>>>Hopefully I can convince one of you to ship to Australia coz I'm having
>>>a hard time finding one here.
>>
>> The Specialix had an XIO system, and a very powerful RIO system,
>> and one other.
>>
>> And I thought Specialix was from Austrailia originally. Or am I
>> confusing that with Stallion. I always thought it was strange
>> that two of the best serial boards were made overseas.

>I see a lot of stallion hardware about , I have some cards here
>in fact, but not so much specialix, I can't even find a website
>for them.

Smart serial board vendors went away when TCP/IP became ubiquitous
and cheap. In the past 5 years the only serial thing I touched was
reconfiguring a modem for a client who took it upon themselves to
move their entire system from one building to another with marking
everything carefull.

>The client that needs the board is a small car dealership
>and they cant justify the cost of an OS upgrade and
>the hardware that goes with it.

>Two ports on this 8 port board have "died" , hence the need for
>a replacement.

I've seen that before. And it depends upon the hardware as to
whether the problem is in the ports or in the board inside the
system. Some would run a bundle of wires out to the outboard
ports - which would have NO smarts in them. So your problem could
be the interface card. Just throwing that out as a possibility.

>I dont suppose there is a way to use the 2 serial ports on the PC
>itself to replace the 2 dead ports?

No problem. The difference is the CPU will be doing all the work,
while smart serial system like the Specialix and Stallions were
'smart' devices, and all the low level processing was handled by
the on-board processor instead of the computer. That means that
the commands you enter at the keyboard are passed to the OS only
when you finish a complete command. All echoing of characters to
the screen is done by the board. In using the serial ports each
character has to be echoed back by the kernel. This is not a
problem for two ports, but early multi-port serial boards weren't
all that smart.

In timing of the old board against things like the Specialix system
resources were 90% less in the smart boards. This makes a real
difference the more you have. The biggest I had at a client site
had eight sixteen port boards - with many ports going into
multiplexors for far cities. We even remoted some of the 16 port
boards to the far cities. I DO NOT miss that at all. I don't
even know where my RS232 testers are - and I used to have several.

The only real TCP/IP problem I had was when a client needed their
IPs at a trade show and we set up the damned route imagineable
with traffic going from Florida to California up through the
midwest and to Washington DC. About 6000 miles of connection
to get to a place 800 miles away by car. Two days and trouble
shooting through four different providers and talking to NOCs in
CA, MN, and DC. And at one point one of the telco's had crossed
the cable connections. But it was all SW and no rewiring a thing.
I'll take that any day.

>The vt100 terminals they use only support rs232,
>also the place is wired for serial when it was built,
>there was no cat5 back then.

Nothing wrong with serial except the speed - and in things written
for pure text terminal applications you normally won't see a
problem. It's when someone tries to get fancy things get slow.
It may be as simple as enablling the ports.

That will most assuredly be your quickest and cheapest option. 

-- 
Bill Vermillion - bv @ wjv . com

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