NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #20/NN_1992_20.iso/spool/comp/sys/3b1/3345

Internet Message Format | 1992-09-12 | 5.9 KB

Path: sparky!uunet!beartrk!ceilidh!hijo-2!dnichols
From: [e-mail] (Don Nichols (DoN.))
Newsgroups: comp.sys.3b1
Subject: Re: I'm still around, just not 3b1'ing much lately.
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Date: 13 Sep 92 03:17:46 GMT
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In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (James W. Birdsall) writes:
>>Unfortunately that's (for sale postings) all I see these days of "real
>>substance" in c.s.3b1.  The machine had it's hay-day, probably a year
>>after the AT&T discontinue/fire-sales ... then other machines got cheaper,
>>more advanced, and more attainable for those with limited budgets...
>
>   Well, there's still one thing that the 3B1 does better cheaper than
>anything else I can think of on the used market: serial ports. The really
>cheap Suns (3/50,3/60) have only two; after that, you have to buy SCSI or
>Ethernet terminal concentrators (major $$$). I believe that serial ports
>can be added to the larger, VME-based Sun3's, but neither the boards nor
>the machines are as cheap as 3B1's. Multiport serial boards for IBM
>compatibles are expensive as well. The only other machines I see used in
>significant quantities are NeXTs, which don't have lots of ports either.
>Whereas it is possible to outfit a 3B1 with seven ports relatively cheaply.

    Well, it depends on what you're trying to add them to.  I have a
Sun 2/120 (which is a multibus-based 68010 machine), and I also have a
Systech MTI800/1600 (which is not what its name might imply, a tape
controller for both 800 BPI and 1600 BPI :-), but is really a (depending on
whether it is the 800 or the 1600 model) either 8 or 16 serial ports good to
19200, with a cpu on the card to take the interrupt load.  The one that I
have is the 16 port version.  I could put it in my 2/120 (it came with
owlsley, my 68000-based v7 system, which is currently in retirement),
however I find that I don't need that many serial ports.  (The 2/120 has six
- two on the cpu board, and four others on the SCSI board, but I haven't
bothered connecting up the extra four.)  Once I had ethernet connecting the
machines together, I didn't need the uucp links between machines, and only
need one uucp link to the outside world (two sites, but only one
modem/phone-line/serial-port).  There are drivers in the kernel of the 2/120
for this board (and also in the kernel for the 3/140 and 3/60, which implies
that I could put the board in a vme-multibus adapter and run it in the 3/140
(if I had an extra slot in the chassis).

    Yes, ethernet is expensive, and hard to get for the 3B1, but one
ethernet card (at $400, when I got it) gives high-speed connections between
the 3B1 and *all* the other systems at once, with no polling, etc.  Also,
the other systems come with the ethernet built in (no extra cost there,
except for the tranceivers, since I chose to go thick-net).  Also, the $400
for the ethernet card and software compares favorably to three combo cards
without RAM, bought for the serial ports.

>Of course, it won't stand up to heavy traffic, but if you're trying to
>connect a bunch of machines you can probably arrange things such that no
>more than one or two ports are loaded at any given time.

    The ethernet *will* stand up to heavy traffic.  (Well, when I did a
"ping -f" (flood option) to the 3B1 from two other machines at once, I did
crash it with a kernel panic. :-)

>   That's what I did. My main machine these days is a Sun 3/60, but the hub
>of my little UUCP network is the 3B1, simply because it's the only machine
>I have that can do the job at a reasonable cost.

    Yes, there is no way that I know of to add serial ports to the 3/60,
even with a multi-slot cardcage for it, because it doesn't use the bus
connector for anything other than power.

    However, it *does* come with the ethernet built in, even the
transceiver, if you use thinnet.  You can even get PC-NFS and an ethernet
card for a PC-clone, and do NFS-mounts of filesystems from the Suns with
their (potentially) large disks.  (It is kind of fun to watch the expression
of a typical PC user when I do:

    E:
    DIR

and get a directory listing with the indication of over 300MB left free, and
then cd to H: and get similar results.)

    The serial ports might be more of a reason if you are driving
multiple printers/plotters/etc, but you can hang one or two on each machine
and access them quickly through the ethernet.

    This does not mean that I am going to ge getting rid of *my* 3B1s,
but I *am* going to make sure that they remain ethernet connected with the
rest of the machines.  I used to have a ton of serial lines going to
owlsley, and a few others going between crutial machines, and then owlsley
was nice to have for those 16 serial ports.  However, now, I have a single
coax going past all the machines, where I had 4-12 wires going to each
machine.  It is neater (in a house that doesn't have enough room to ever
really *be* neat), and a lot easier to make changes, since I don't have to
have all these identical cables with tags (or notes directly on the cable
jacket or connectors) which have to be changed when something is
added/removed/moved.

    What I *would* like to do with one of the 3B1s is to find a
Voice-Poser card being offered, since I need to make a voice-mail type
touch-tone maze for the Folklore Society's answering machine, since the
outgoing messages are getting too long, and giving callers the ability to
steer their way to the topics that interest them woulc be nice.

    I've gone on too long
        DoN.

--
Donald Nichols (DoN.)     | Voice (Days): [phone] (Eves): [phone]
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