Date: Mon, 29 Jun 92 09:38:20 EST From: Dwight D. McKay (The Moderator) Reply-To: Suns-at-Home@orchestra.ecn.purdue.edu Subject: Suns-at-Home Digest V5 #26 To: Suns-at-Home-List Suns-at-Home Digest Mon, 29 Jun 92 Volume 5 : Issue 26 Today's Topics: Confusion over my posting of Wed, 17 Jun 92 Cross-compiler SLIP and PPP and VJ and modems Suns-at-Home Digest V5 #25 (2 msgs) +--------------------------------------------------------------------+ | Submissions: suns-at-home \ @orchestra.ecn.purdue.edu | | Requests: suns-at-home-request > -- or -- | | Archives: suns-at-home-archives / ...rutgers!pur-ee!... | +--------------------------------------------------------------------+ ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 25 Jun 92 10:10:46 -0400 From: steve-massie@orl.mmc.com Subject: Confusion over my posting of Wed, 17 Jun 92 To: Suns-at-Home@orchestra.ecn.purdue.edu, stevem@kildare.orl.mmc.com Because of the great number of inquiries I've had sent directly to me I would like to post the following clarification. I responded to inquiries about disk and tape units with the following text: In response to your questions about disk and tape units for SUN. I have a SUN IPC at home with a 780 MB Hitachi disk and an Exabyte 8200 8mm tape unit. I purchased the unit in December of 1991 with cables, manuals, cleaning tape, etc. for $3229.00. I know the same box with 1/4 QIC150 tape was $500.00 or so cheaper. You might consider the 8mm as I did since I beleive I have already saved the $500.00 on the difference in media costs. An 8mm tape can be purchased at any store that sells video tapes for about $6.00 where as a 1/4 tape is substantially more and not as convenient to obtain on a Saturday evening at 10:00. ( You can also swipe one out of the video camera if you really need one quickly ) =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Sorry if the message was confusing. The $3,229.00 price was just for the external disk and tape. The IPC with 8 MB of memory, a 207MB internal disk, CDROM Drive, and Phillips Monitor was and additional $5,000.00. I didn't think anyone would think I was talking about the whole system. If it sounds to good to be true it probably is. Sorry, Steve ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 25 Jun 92 12:42:44 +0200 From: picard@vercors.imag.fr Subject: Cross-compiler To: Suns-at-Home@ecn.purdue.edu the subject say it all. i have a sun3/60 at home (with 4.1 for what matter), and bunch of sun4 at work, has anyone build a cross compiler ? I just start compiling gcc-2.2.2 (whith host=sun4 and target=sun3), i build a68 on the sparc, i can instruct the newly created gcc (gnu cross compiler) to use a68 on sparc, but i failed to ld. more precisely i build gcc fine upto make prefix=/usr/picard/gcc-cross ./gcc -DCROSS_COMPILE -g -B./ -c ./cross-test.c ./gcc -DCROSS_COMPILE -g -B./ cross-test.o -o cross-test ld: crt0.o: No such file or directory collect: /usr/bin/ld returned 4 exit status *** Error code 1 make: Fatal error: Command failed for target `cross-test' I bring from a local sun3 crt0.o then Mcrt1.o but i choke on ./gcc -DCROSS_COMPILE -g -B./ -c ./cross-test.c ./gcc -DCROSS_COMPILE -g -B./ cross-test.o -o cross-test ld: -lgcc: No such file or directory collect: /usr/bin/ld returned 4 exit status *** Error code 1 this seems to be a lack of library (/usr/lib/lib[gc]c.a ?) i dont have a libgcc.a since i am building the compiler. Jean Yves ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 22 Jun 92 14:20:42 -0400 From: Bob Sutterfield Subject: SLIP and PPP and VJ and modems To: Suns-at-Home@orchestra.ecn.purdue.edu Suns-at-Home Digest Mon, 22 Jun 92 Volume 5 : Issue 25 Date: Mon, 15 Jun 92 14:49:06 CDT From: aqn@thaison.tivoli.com (Andy Nguyen) Subject: About Sun3/60, slip, etc + From: gcd@einstein.bgsu.edu (Comer Duncan) + Second, I am interested in perhaps putting up slip. Do any of + you have slip up and running on similar systems? Does it make + sense to run slip with a 3/60? Is it necessary to have SunOS + 4.1.1 up first? Versions of SLIP and PPP are available for Sun-3s that will run with just about any version of SunOS. Especially if you're running SLIP, make sure you have installed Sun's patch #100283 to fix the dreaded "panic: mclput". A UNIX BBS (Panix, NYC) that I use runs SLIP to a local Internet node (PSI, NY). I can FTP, telnet etc... into the BBS (from Texas), tho the speed is not really good enough for interactive use. I don't know how a dedicated SLIP line (i.e. where you're the only user) would perform. A dial-up IP link is really pretty useful for only a few users. If you're sharing it with a lot of other traffic (SMTP and NNTP) then you will undoubtedly notice your throughput and responsiveness varying as the other load varies. There are ways, employed by some SLIPs and PPPs, to give interactive traffic some level of priority over batch traffic, but in the UNIX environment they don't help all that much. + Third, what do you know about the variety of modems out there + that would be of 'reasonable' cost and can do say at least 9600 + without compression? I use a ZyXEL modem ... V32 and V32b, V42 and V42b, MNP5 (data compression?), and G3 FAX... I have never connected with a Telelbit T3000 yet, though I will soon. We use Telebit T1600s, T3000s, and WorldBlazers, and we're very satisfied with them. They seem to connect successfully with everything we've tried so far. If you're buying a new modem today, I'd suggest something that can run a V.32bis carrier, with V.42 error correction and V.42bis data compression. If you can't find a V.32bis modem you can afford, get something with V.32/V.42/V.42bis. Be sure that its serial port can do 38400 (some do only 19200), so you can feed it bits fast enough to take advantage of the in-modem data compression. + Fifth, does it make any sense to run slip between work and home + if 9600 is the maximum speed? With compression one apparently + gets a [much?] better throughput. Over a V.32 (9600) carrier, V.42 and V.42bis will give about 1.7Kbytes/sec FTP throughput for /vmunix, and about 2.8 Kbyte/sec for /usr/dict/words. Yes, data compression helps throughput a lot, especially if your system is talking to the modem at 38400. Some people run PPP and SLIP over non-compressing 9600 links (e.g. Datakit), and they're relatively satisfied with it. It's better than nothing at all. It could mean that X-Windows stuff would be pretty slow, especially when it involves lots of data e.g. pictures and such. On the other hand, I do not know if X-Windows over SLIP line is actually useable, having never witnessed it. Two factors will determine your satisfaction with a SLIP or PPP link: the highest common speed of the modems on each end of the wire, and whether the hosts behind those modems run SLIP or PPP software that implements RFC-1144 "VJ" TCP header compression. When a SLIP does VJ, it's commonly called "CSLIP". When a PPP does VJ, it's called "a useful PPP." I have run non-VJ SLIP over a 2400bps modem with no error correction or data compression. It was useful for the occasional finger or whois, domain name lookups, and running NTP to keep my clocks in sync. It was not useful for interactive traffic, and FTPs were terribly slow. I have run SLIP and PPP, each both with and without VJ, over Telebit PEP modems (e.g. the TrailBlazer, T2500, or WorldBlazer). While PEP can hold a line where nothing else will, it's not the best for IP traffic because it takes so long to turn the half-duplex PEP carriers around for the ACKs. VJ-compressed SLIP or PPP over PEP works, and it's perhaps better than at 2400, but it's still not all that pleasant. Please don't torture yourself by running non-VJ-compressed SLIP or PPP over a PEP link. I have a Sun-4/110 at home, and talk VJ-compressed PPP over a T1600 (V.32/V.42/V.42bis) to a network of SPARCstation-1s at work. I often run X11R4 clients over the link. If the client does mostly text stuff (xterm, emacs) then you're better off opening a local xterm and then using telnet or rlogin to cross the link, because X will throw a lot of bits. I have used non-text X clients with some success. If your client uses a lot of big, deep color bitmaps, and if it has a lot of sliders and other sorts of interactive widgets, they'll work, but you'll be disappointed with the performance (both responsiveness and throughput). Date: Mon, 15 Jun 92 22:09:05 PDT From: zurna!sinan@sunup.West.Sun.COM (Sinan Karasu) Subject: Suns-at-Home Digest V5 #24 [really About Sun3/60, slip, etc] I understand that wiretap is much better than slip. What's wiretap? I've never heard of it. Is it another means of encapsulating IP datagrams over serial lines? Date: Tue, 16 Jun 92 14:23:02 CDT From: "Peter N. Saurugger" Subject: Suns-at-Home Digest V5 #24 [really About Sun3/60, slip, etc] I plan to connect my home machine to the Internet, too. My understanding is that PPP has advantages (speed) over SLIP. It's a while since we heard from people doing this. I would like to hear a comparison of the two protocols! You may find some useful tidbits in the paper I presented at last December's Sun User Group meeting in San Jose. You can get it via FTP from ftp.uu.net:vendor/MorningStar/papers/sug91-cheapIP.ps.Z. The short answer to your question is: I have been unable to measure any performance difference between SLIP and PPP. A typical TCP/IP packet when wrapped with PPP encapsulation has three bytes more per-frame protocol overhead than the same packet wrapped with SLIP encapsulation. Since VJ vs. non-VJ (whether SLIP or PPP) will yield a overhead difference of more like fifty bytes, the biggest performance win (whether you're running SLIP or PPP) is to make sure your software does VJ. The reason that you may have heard that PPP has speed advantages over SLIP is that most PPPs out there do VJ, and there are still some SLIPs out there that don't. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 22 Jun 92 10:22:40 PDT From: knauer@knauer.intel.com (Rob Knauerhase) Subject: Suns-at-Home Digest V5 #25 To: Suns-at-Home@ecn.purdue.edu >aqn@thaison.tivoli.com (Andy Nguyen) writes: >+ Sixth, given that one is going to have a Sun3/60 and disk drive running >+ at home, what do I need to consider as far as power requirements? Must >+ I buy [ugh!] a UPS? Do you guys turn the 3/50 off at night and restart >+ when you use it every so often, or do you leave it on? >I turn it on when I use it. I use it about 2-3 hours every night. No point >in wasting electrons leaving the thing on all the time. Not to mention the >calories it put out... enough to heat a small house! I left my 3/60 on all the time this past academic year, and found that I actually _saved_ about $10/month on electricity. I suspect that each of the 3/60 pizzabox, monitor, and drive are more efficient than my baseboard heaters (plus the baseboard units don't run X :). I have a small apartment, and only turned on the actual heat twice during the winter. I didn't worry too much about power outages, though I did turn it off during some thunderstorms and whenever I left town for more than a couple days. Re: SL/IP, I know people at UIUC using it happily (though not NFS-mounting volumes, etc. because of the speed). They seemed happy with the speed (given the convenience of sitting at home) for most uses. I did not get SL/IP going first because of a problem with hay_sync() in the modified tip (from relay.cs.toronto.edu). I later hacked it and got the SL/IP interface up, and could watch "ping" light the transmit LED on my modem, but never got a response. [Suggestions about why this didn't work will be appreciated, even though I'm not in the same state as my machine this summer.] Unfortunately, my thesis then began beckoning and I went back to a big xterm with 'tip' when I needed to dial in... Rob -- Rob Knauerhase knauer@knauer.intel.com Intel Multimedia Software Technology Group (summer) knauer@cs.uiuc.edu Univ. of Illinois, Dept. of CS, Gigabit Study Group ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 27 Jun 92 1:17:25 CST From: Simon Hackett Subject: Suns-at-Home Digest V5 #25 To: Suns-at-Home@ecn.purdue.edu > From: steve@grian.cps.altadena.ca.us (Steve Mitchell) > Subject: need cable pin-out for 4/20 serial ports > Date: Wed, 17 Jun 1992 21:22:40 GMT > > The subject pretty much says it. I need the pin-out for the silly > serial connector on the back of the SPARCstation SLC (4/20), the one > where they brought two serial ports out a single db25 connector. I > finally need to use both ports, and don't really want to pay Sun's > outrageous price for the serial port splitter cable. Sun did something right in this case; the second serial port uses the standard RS-232 pin designations for the "secondary" serial port. Look at any good breakout box, and you'll see: (S)TD 14 (S)RD 16 use pin 7 for ground (it's common), and use pints 14 and 16 for transmit and receive data respectively. Secondary carrier detect is pint 12 according to the EIA standard, but I don't recall if sun wire it up on the second port. the best source of this info: believe it or not, go get out those books that came with the SPARCstation - the ones that look like useless bozo instructions like "locate the power cord and plug it in". One of them actually has the cable pinouts printed in it. True! cheers, Simon ------------------------------ End of Suns-at-Home Digest ******************************