[comp.unix.microport] Need TCP/IP Interface For NEC 386

tima@iscuva.ISCS.COM (Tim Addington) (11/15/88)

I have recently acquired a NEC PowerMate 386 PC which is running
Microport System V/Dosmerge Software.  I need to connect this box to
our Thin Wire Ethernet LAN here and am looking for any recomendations,
suggestions, and experience any of you have had.

What I am looking for is a LAN card and software which has a TCP/IP
interface and TELNET capabilities.

Any advice you can give me will be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

ken@uport.UUCP (Ken Chapin) (11/16/88)

In article <2161@iscuva.ISCS.COM> tima@iscuva.ISCS.COM (Tim Addington) writes:
->
->I have recently acquired a NEC PowerMate 386 PC which is running
->Microport System V/Dosmerge Software.  I need to connect this box to
->our Thin Wire Ethernet LAN here and am looking for any recomendations,
->suggestions, and experience any of you have had.
->
->What I am looking for is a LAN card and software which has a TCP/IP
->interface and TELNET capabilities.
->
->Any advice you can give me will be greatly appreciated.
->
->Thanks

Both Micom and Excelan make hardware/software combos for what you need. Also 
look soon for CMC as well as a combo form Wollengong/3Com.

dave@pmafire.UUCP (Dave Remien) (11/16/88)

In article <2161@iscuva.ISCS.COM> tima@iscuva.ISCS.COM (Tim Addington) writes:
>
>I have recently acquired a NEC PowerMate 386 PC which is running
>Microport System V/Dosmerge Software.  I need to connect this box to
>our Thin Wire Ethernet LAN here and am looking for any recomendations,
>suggestions, and experience any of you have had.
>
>What I am looking for is a LAN card and software which has a TCP/IP
>interface and TELNET capabilities.

Our group currently has a Mylex 20Mhz machine with Microport 3.0e
unlimited, DOSMerge 1.1 unlimited, and MICOM Interlan's NP622 with MICOM
software; as well as a Bell Tech machine with BLIT card, Bell Tech
Ethernet card (the National one, I think), DOSMerge 1.0, and Bell Tech
UNIX (all unlimited).  *BOTH* machines, with TCP/IP and Merge in the
kernel, are less than absolutely reliable, and the problem seems to be
in the keyboard driver.  (After using the keyboard under DOSMerge, not
much works correctly).  Otherwise, both work pretty well over the LAN,
using both Merge and regular UNIX stuff.  Both are very reliable without
Merge in the kernel.  It is weird to be sitting at a terminal on our
HP9000/835, and fire up DOS, I can tell you.  From a pure TCP/IP and
telnet standpoint; the Bell Tech software isn't as reliable and bug free
as the MICOM Interlan package, there are no diagnostics, and some of the
daemons are missing from Bell - rwhod and ruptime.  MICOM didn't supply
either diagnostics or ping, so you pay your money, you get your choice. 
The MICOM card has an 80186 and 512K of RAM, and is less of a burden on
the system than the Bell card (CPU time), but both have about the same
throughput on the LAN (we average 60 to 100 Kbytes/second, writing to
the other machines cache, same rate to our HP9000/835). 

Our 9000/835, on the other hand, has everything for TCP/IP and NFS, is
*absolutely* reliable, and, of course, cost a lot more.

-- 
Dave Remien - WINCO Computer Engineering Group (only somewhat confused, now)
208-526-3523 Paths: ...!bigtex!pmafire!dave | ...!ucdavis!egg-id!pma386!dave