dewey@sequoia.UUCP (Dewey Henize) (05/11/89)
I'm having to share some peripherals among several machines. It's (at least to
me) a pretty nasty configuration, and I need some help.
Hopefully some of the comm gurus out there will find this an 'interesting' pair of problems...
Our company has a Micom Instanet 6600. We are also running a Sequent S81
and a Sun 3/180. I would like to find a way to reasonably share some of
the modems we have between these two computers using the Micom.
The desired scenario is that the modems would be attached to the Micom,
and selectable by either machine. Incoming calls would get the micoms
initial message, enter the required site password, then get to chose one
of the computers via a class name. When either of the computers needed
to make an outgoing call, it would select a modem via a class name,
then use chat scripts to dial out, log onto the external system or whatever,
and when finished relinquish the line, etc.
The computers have enough serial ports that I don't need have to have them
us any serial port for both dialin and dialout, but obviously I don't have the
same option on the modems.
Has anyone done this? The modems I have available are:
9 Telebit TB+
1 USR Courier 1200
1 Hayes Smartmodem 1200 (8 dip switch version)
5 Hayes Smartmodem 1200 (10 dip switch version)
4 Everex Evercom 24
Right now, I have sorta gotten there with the Hayes and the USR. I got from
a Micom person (very unofficially) a cable spec as follows:
Modem Micom
2 ------------------------ 3
3 ------------------------ 2
--- 4 ------------------------ 5
| 5 ------------------------ 4 --\
--- 8 20 --/
7 ------------------------ 7
20 ------------------------ 6
22 ------------------------25
25 ------------------------22
The micom port is set to use micom protocol '6', which is for sharing
modems between indial and outdial. Other than that, I don't have anything
like decent documentation on what the protocol is. There are several other
protocols as well, with the same level of documentation.
Getting the computers to talk to the Micom is not a problem, either in the
outgoing or incoming direction. The problems are with the modems and the
wiring for them. The above diagram does NOT seem to work in any fashion with
the Everex, for example.
I can put together almost any kind of cable(s) needed, but I'm running out of
ideas real fast here. Help on all or part of this would be much appreciated,
as I don't know what step to take next on this. Unfortunately, more hardware
other than cables isn't an option right now.
I hate to waste a lot of the modem capability I have now, and I sure can't
really hope to get more modems for the different machines. Besides, having
the Micom add the additional level of of password security is seen by many
folks here as a very real benefit (it will also allow reasonable timeout
processing, since it can drop DTR after a certain amount of idle time -
another plus for our installation.)
HELP!
Dewey
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| ...!cs.utexas.edu!execu!dewey or | "If you will just quit shouting at me, I |
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