dennis@rlgvax.UUCP (Dennis.Bednar) (11/13/87)
This might be of some interest to you all.
Excelan has a co-processor ethernet board to run TCP/IP
for the IBM-PC. It implements TCP/IP on a front-end
processor board, known as the EXOS 205 board, under
control of an operating system kernel.
The PC downloads the front-end software into the front-end
board (also called the Ethernet controller card).
The board does IP, ARP, ICMP, TCP, and UDP.
This is just a theory, but I bet they started with 4.2 BSD kernel
code, and hacked on it to make it work. I also suspect the
interface is simple: open, read, write, close; and the 205
board does all the nitty-gritty protocol.
We have it on an IBM-PC-AT, also with the (OPUS NS32K cpu)
board running UNIX. Ftp and telnet are invokable from UNIX,
plus we wrote a library package to allow other applications
to interface into TCP/IP on the UNIX side. The library was
linked into other programs which we use for OfficePower (tm)
E-mail transfers over TCP/IP/ethernet.
As I understand the package, there is *not* a way to support
TCP/IP server daemons on the MS-DOS side, but there *is* a way to
support daemons when the Excelan board is accessed from UNIX
on the OPUS card. Maybe this is related to the lack of
true multi-tasking on the PC.
--
FullName: Dennis Bednar
UUCP: {uunet|sundc}!rlgvax!dennis
USMail: CCI; 11490 Commerce Park Dr.; Reston VA 22091
Telephone: +1 703 648 3300