chris@mddc.UUCP (Chris Maloney) (06/28/84)
Does anyone know the specifics?
This is a Unibus Ethernet controller that does IP/TCP/???
on the board. Excelean sales tells me they will be ready to
ship in small quantaties by the end of August. But I know
about the problems people run into with the Unibus.
How will it work with 4.2bsd?
How does the Multibus version work with 4.2bsd? Does it?
Has anyone seen one or know more about the project status?
I need several Unibus Ethernet controllers, so should I
buy DEUNA's or wait for Excelean? (the end of Aug--Sep
would be OK.)
Thanks,
Chris Maloney
Management Decisions Development Corp.
7209 Dixie Highway
Fairfield, Ohio 45014
(513)874-6464
...{ucbvax,decvax,inhp4,mhuxi}!cbosgd!mddc!chris (uucp)
cbosgd!mddc!chris@BERKELEY (arpa)mark@cbosgd.UUCP (Mark Horton) (06/30/84)
The current multibus Excelan board probably works, but the software they ship with it doesn't speak ARP, so I haven't tried. I understand their latest software speaks ARP, but it requires that you use a class A network, which is unacceptable. George Powers at Excelan understands the problem and a few weeks ago said he was going to go off and think about it. Of course, all he needs to do is what 4.2BSD does. The choice between Excelan and DEUNA is probably best based on the operating system you want to run on your VAX. The Excelan board is designed for System V and seems to be about the only hope of getting a System V VAX on an Ethernet (other than a locally hacked UNET). The DEUNA (which I understand is comparable to an Interlan board) is supported under 4.2BSD. I understand it might be possible to do some magic and glue 4.2BSD and an Excelan board together, but Excelan is not doing this and it would be nontrivial (especially if your host has network links other than the Ethernet.) There are two ways to glue it - some very careful splicing in a driver table in the kernel, or "the way it was intended to run" which means bypassing the 4.2BSD kernel networking code and using the Excelan C library emulations of the system calls.
irwin@uiucdcs.UUCP (07/13/84)
#R:mddc:-33300:uiucdcs:8900005:000:514 uiucdcs!irwin Jul 13 14:12:00 1984 The base note did not say which DEC machine (Unibus) or what software. We here at Dept. of Comp. Sci. at University of Illinois are running 7 Vax-750s and 2 Vax-780s on an Ethernet using 3Com boards on the Unibus and have had no problems. We first installed them under 4.1a BSD and then updated to 4.2BSD. (One can assume the basenote indicates that it would be used with 4.2BSD since he asks if it would work with that). Al Irwin Dept. of Comp. Sci. University of Il Urbana, Il 61801 217-333-4801 uiucdcs!irwin