schoff@RPICS.CSNET (Martin Lee Schoffstall) (12/12/85)
I had submitted a request awhile ago to determine the state of this but had received no answer... Here at RPI we have a number of physicists who are enamored with their RIDGE. However now it is time to communicate with the rest of the campus and hopefully the rest of the world. According to Ridge a $4000 Ethernet option can be acquired and the protocols can be run over this interface; however, for various reasons this is not expedient for us. My understanding is that the network implementation was evolved from 4.2bsd unix so I would like to know if anyone has tried to port the SL code from rick@seismo into the ROS environment so that IP can run over RS232 ports. I would also like to hear from anyone who has been running with this networking code with other machines like vaxes, suns, 3600's etc... and tell me how it has been performing (using the ethernet). marty schoffstall schoff%rpics.csnet@csnet-relay ARPA schoff@rpics CSNET seismo!rpics!schoff UUCP martin_schoffstall@TROY.NY.USA.NA.EARTH.SOL UNIVERSENET RPI Computer Science Department Troy, NY 12180 (518) 271-2654
bogstad@HOPKINS-EECS-BRAVO.ARPA ("William J. Bogstad") (12/12/85)
I am undoubtedly not the most qualified person to speak on this subject, but in the interest of producing maximum confusion I will give it a try. My understanding of ROS is that the "operating system" is made up of several processes which handle various functions. As an example, there is a disk volume manager process, a file system manager process, a tape driver process, etc. The serial line IP/TCP code from seismo is for the single kernel process used in 4.2BSD. I suspect that it would be possible to port this code to ROS, but it would require a lot of work. An additional problem results from the fact that ROS is shipped as binary files without source code. This would make it impossible for a normal site to attempt the porting project. I don't know what Ridge policy is on giving outside organizations access to source code so you would have to contact them directly. I hope this provides some information, at least why it isn't likely to be down for awhile yet. Bill Bogstad