Date: Sat, 20 May 89 11:05:20 EST From: Dwight D. McKay (The Moderator) Reply-To: Suns-at-Home@orchestra.ecn.purdue.edu Subject: Suns-at-Home Digest V2 #12 To: Suns-at-Home-List Suns-at-Home Digest Sat, 20 May 89 Volume 2 : Issue 12 Today's Topics: Best modems for SLIP? (Suns-at-Home Digest V2 #11) Suns-at-Home Digest V2 #11 +--------------------------------------------------------------------+ | Submissions: suns-at-home \ @orchestra.ecn.purdue.edu | | Requests: suns-at-home-request > -- or -- | | Archives: suns-at-home-archives / ...rutgers!pur-ee!... | +--------------------------------------------------------------------+ ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 15 May 89 19:42:06 PDT From: Greg Earle Subject: Best modems for SLIP? (Suns-at-Home Digest V2 #11) To: dna%emmy.UMD.EDU@ames.ARC.NASA.GOV I think I can speak fairly to this; I had my Sun-3/160M at home for about 8 months ... (^: If you are going to connect 2 SPARCStations (model #'s?) via modem, here's what I can offer (I assume this is home <-> office? You mean you can sucker U of Md. to buy an extra one for you to take home?? Where do I sign up? (^: ) (1) First of all, you will need a robust SunOS 4.0.3 SLIP implementation. I would advise looking in ~ftp/pub/Sun_Patch_tapes_et_al. on this machine: elroy.JPL.NASA.GOV (128.149.1.100) and grab the SLIP distribution from there. This is because it fixes a couple of crucial bugs in Rayan Zachariessen's implementation, and it also adds support for LCK..cua# UUCP/tip-style lockfiles (if you have a SLIP link up and you/someone tries to use tip(1) without a lock file, it wreaks havoc on the SLIP link - trust me). I have also added a (crude) version of a dialer program, that will call the other end up, and prompt for the user account and password to be fed to the other end (uses getpass() so these names are not echoed; enhances security a little). All in all, it's a slightly more robust version than the one you can get from AI.Toronto.EDU. (2) I have been using this version over a Telebit TrailBlazer Plus link to the aforementioned machine, elroy.JPL.NASA.GOV. I should mention that elroy is a poor old Sun-2/170 running SunOS 4.0.1, and it is a main mail/Usenet relay for JPL as well as being the secondary name server for the JPL domain to boot - so a lot of the time, it is VERY loaded and extremely slow. That said, I can say this: the best ping(8) turnaround times I can get on this connection, merely calling within the JPL phone system, is around 1.1 seconds (i.e., 1100 msec.). Remember, this is with 2 TB+'s at each end of the line. To contrast, there is another SLIP link here at JPL, a link which connects an Encore Annex terminal server with SLIP capability, to a Sun which is located in Anaheim CA, about 35 miles away. The nature of this link, on the other hand, is 2 synchronous modems, talking over a 9600-baud dedicated leased line. At each end, there are Black Box converters which switch from Synch to Asynch; the Sun end is plugged into the standard CPU serial port. Not sure about the Encore end; presumed similar. In this case, I was able to ping the remote end of that link from a machine on the same net as the Encore, and was getting consistent turnaround times of 0.3 seconds (i.e., 300 msec.) per packet. So, it seems that even allowing for a factor to creep in (i.e., remote machine overloading due to wimpy old CPU), it seems that the Asynch-Synch leased line method gains a factor of at least 3 in throughput over the Telebit-based method. One thing which we have not tried yet is to try connecting between my machine and elroy at 2400 baud instead, and then see what the ping turnaround times are. We suspect that they won't be much different/worse, and suspect that the non-V.32 nature of the Telebits (we have TB+'s, not T2500's remember) is what is causing the line turnaround slowdowns. FTP's between the two machines are usually running around 800 bytes/sec. Hope this helps, - Greg Earle Sun Microsystems, Inc. JPL on-site Software Support earle@Sun.COM earle@mahendo.JPL.NASA.GOV (Guest account) ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 16 May 89 21:52:33 CDT From: loyola!jack@cs.utexas.edu (Jack L Bell) Subject: Suns-at-Home Digest V2 #11 To: Suns-at-Home%cs.utexas.edu@orchestra.ecn.purdue.edu I am interested in the success of others in grafting either ESDI or SCSI disks onto a Multibus Sun2 ( well, it's upgraded to a 2). I've the old MB to SCSI borad, and a dead ST506 drive that I need to replace.. and I thought I'd see what's been done before I repeated that mistake. Anyone? I'll summarize, if there are any responses.. Thanx. ------------------------------ End of Suns-at-Home Digest ******************************