jbvb@BORAX.LCS.MIT.EDU (James B. VanBokkelen) (10/22/86)
A week ago, I encountered a strange situation: A contact informed me that his Gould MPX-32 needed to know our Ethernet address (in its host table) in order to communicate; How did he set the corresponding info in our host table? Further investigation revealed that the Gould product has a mode where it sends IP packets using 802.3 packet formats, without ARP. Luckily for us, this mode can be changed back to what they call Ethernet 1.0 by re-strapping the board and changing a configuration command in the startup file. The Gould support people say that the transceiver also has to be replaced (did some lines in the cable actually get re-defined?), but experiment indicates this isn't necessary, at least on a small Ether. Of course, I was mildly amazed to see anyone actually going this far in honor of the guy from the corporate standards committee with the clipboard and the checklist, but I've seen sillier... Posting this primarily to inform the world that the swamp has gained a new kind of mud. jbvb@ai.ai.mit.edu FTP Software Inc. (617) 864-1711