roy@phri.UUCP (Roy Smith) (12/10/87)
I'm looking for an IP driver for the synchronous port of a DEC
DMF-32 to be used on a 4.3BSD (actually MtXinu 4.3/NFS) vax. The standard
4.3 driver doesn't support use of the sync port; is there some reason why,
other than that nobody bothered to write it because they had better
alternative interfaces to use? Is there some horrible secret about DMF's
which make them lousy network devices?
--
Roy Smith, {allegra,cmcl2,philabs}!phri!roy
System Administrator, Public Health Research Institute
455 First Avenue, New York, NY 10016stevens@hsi.UUCP (Richard Stevens) (12/11/87)
In article <3061@phri.UUCP>, roy@phri.UUCP (Roy Smith) writes: > > I'm looking for an IP driver for the synchronous port of a DEC > DMF-32 to be used on a 4.3BSD (actually MtXinu 4.3/NFS) vax. The standard > 4.3 driver doesn't support use of the sync port; is there some reason why, > other than that nobody bothered to write it because they had better > alternative interfaces to use? Is there some horrible secret about DMF's > which make them lousy network devices? We have a driver for the synchronous port of the DMF-32 (we added the support to the 4.3 driver that Keith Muller at UCSD distributes, since the distributed 4.3 driver doesn't handle Emulex boards correctly). We started with a 4.2 BSD driver from the Univ. of Guelph that supported the synchronous port using the IBM Bisynch protocol for RSCS emulation. Our driver is used with a proprietary software product that we purchased for SNA LU6.2/PU 2.1 communications. We can give the driver mods to handle the synchronous port to anyone, but we aren't able to distribute the actual SNA data link protocol routines that is now part of our driver. The line counts are: (1) original 4.3 DMF driver from UCSD 1,035 lines (2) our "generic" mods to handle synchronous port 1,230 lines (3) SNA data link code (functions called by driver) 1,794 lines I can distribute (2) but not (3). As you can see, depending on the protocol that you're supporting with the synchronous port, there could still be a lot of work to do, although I'd guess that SNA PU2.1 support could be close to worst case ?? I'd also guess that the reason standard 4.3 doesn't support the synchronous port is that item (2) is of little use without some version of item (3) and there are so many different uses of the sync. port (SDLC for SNA, HDLC for X.25, GenByte for Bisync, GenByte for DECnet's DDCMP, etc.). Richard Stevens Health Systems International, New Haven, CT { uunet | ihnp4 } ! hsi ! stevens