[NCSA-discuss] SCO nfs

[Joseph Mack NA3T]

On Wed, 9 May 2012, Brad Oaks wrote:

> On Wed, May 9, 2012 at 1:19 AM, Joseph Mack NA3T <jmack at wm7d.net> wrote:
>> I've never seen the serial card before and didn't know such things existed.
>> I didn't look at it closely except to note the thick cable coming out of it
>> and that there were several W95 boxes talking to it through Wyse terminal
>> emulators.
>
> They were quite common when the system you're dealing with was first
> installed. :)

thanks for bringing me upto speed on this.

> Some customers would have us rewire their office for 
> ethernet and ended up putting in a hub and taking out the 
> multiport serial cards.  But some of the buildings were so 
> tough to run new cables in that the customer decided to 
> stick with the serial cabling that was already run to 
> every desk.

I expect the guy I'm talking to will take the "if it ain't 
broke don't fix it attitude". In a lot of ways I agree with 
him. He wants to run a business, not be a show room for 
computer technology. The idea of using a vt100 with curses 
in 2012 seems absurd though.

> Occasionally there would be application logic that was specific to
> which serial port the user was logging in from (e.g. different menus
> for different departments).  Each user of the application often did
> not have a system login, but logged directly into the application
> which had direct control over the serial port (as opposed to getty and
> a login process having control).  This changed when we migrated them
> to using telnet, and we had to modify the application a bit to key off
> of the login or group information of the system accounts instead of
> from the serial port number (which was a proxy for knowing which desk
> the terminal was on).

I wouldn't have known where to look for this.

> You should be able to tell by looking over a user's shoulder whether
> it is a system login or if they are immediately in the application
> (including authenticating with the app with a username and password).
> The prompt is a good clue.

OK

> The serial cards were optional addons, and the ones that I 
> remember needed drivers from the card manufacturer. They 
> could make up a significant portion of the cost of a 
> server, too.  DigiBoard is the product line I remember 
> using most, but there were others.  The company Digi is 
> still around and making serial cards. 
> http://www.digi.com/products/serialcards/

SCO really had the customers bend over and take it. Even 
10yrs ago ethernet was it, in everyone else's world

Joe

-- 
Joseph Mack NA3T EME(B,D), FM05lw North Carolina
jmack (at) wm7d (dot) net - azimuthal equidistant map
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