[net.bugs.uucp] uucp vs sytek

honey@down.UUCP (code 101) (04/11/84)

my cohort had only minor troubles bringing up uucp on a sytek.  aside
from the fact that you have to configure it before it asserts carrier,
it's much like any other switch.  we run it at 9600 baud.

i forget who added sytek code (martin levy?), so i can't give proper
credit here.  this lends a minuscule bit of weight to ber's
conjecture:  because a lot of people worked on it for a long time,
honey danber is an example of software engineering rather than a hack.
	peter honeyman

my contribution to the "save the children" fund: this started out as
	Newsgroups: net.unix-wizards
	Subject: Re: Orphaned Response - (nf)

dmmartindale@watcgl.UUCP (Dave Martindale) (04/11/84)

Unless you are using "hardware" flow control on both hosts talking via
Sytek, you have to use XON/XOFF (and probably TANDEM mode) to do flow
control.  Thus you need a new protocol that doesn't transmit XON, XOFF,
or those characters with the parity bit set.  While you're at it, you might
as well eliminate the character which introduces the box's command sequence,
so you don't have to disable that.

A busy SYTEK channel can get slow enough that trying to do this without
flow control, using timeouts to pick up messages garbled by overruns,
could really slow things to a crawl.  And if you don't have the command
sequence on the box disabled and transmit the characters which put the
box into command mode, you've just hung the connection completely.

rjk@mgweed.UUCP (Randy King) (04/13/84)

Yes, we're running uucp on sytek also.  It took lots of cajoling
from Martin@vax135 (formerly lime, rememebr that?), but after you
get your head straight about forgetting flow control, you'll be
fine.  Here's some pointers:

 X) use a dedicated localnet channel for uucp.
 X) set flow NONE unless you are lucky enuff to have EIA
 X) use a uucp that knows how to do things like "\r"

We use Tom Truscott's uucp (rti!trt) which knows how to send
magic characters.  We have one T-box that calls over 20 other
sites in the facility.  It works great at 9600 baud.

						Randy King
						AT&T/CP-MG
						ihnp4!mgweed!rjk

dmmartindale@watcgl.UUCP (Dave Martindale) (04/13/84)

The problem with using a dedicated localnet channel for uucp is that
all of the machines which you are going to call now need to have a Sytek
box permanently dedicated to that channel.  We use the same channel that
all of the normal terminal traffic uses and so the serial ports and Sytek
hardware is used by both people and computers - this is particularly
important for machines that have only 2 or 4 Sytek lines total.
But it does require using flow control.  Able DH/DM's, at least, can
be set up for hardwired flow control of the outgoing data, but we just
use XON/XOFF in both directions by modifying the data stream so it
contains no XON's or XOFF's.  We also leave the command characters
set normally so that people can use the outgoing sytek boxes normally
when uucico isn't using them.

martin@vax135.UUCP (Martin Levy) (04/23/84)

If you want to use the same boxs for users and uucp then trick is to
get command of the box and then change it's mode from normal operation
(flow xon, cmd none, parity even) to have a command strings (esc,del).
Then call the remote machine and change the modes to ones that uucp
will like (cmd none,flow none,parity none) on both ends.  Then You can
uucp without problems on the same ports as normal users.  I used
/etc/getty to reset the options when it started up, even if the
previous user was not uucp.  This all can be fogotten if you have eia
flow control.

martin.