[Info-vax] VAX RDMs (Remote Diagnostic Modules)

[brian]

At the DEC customer center in Canada there was a set of 7 or 8 modems 
(300b to 9600b) connected to a terminal server (a Dec Server 200 I 
believe) from there to a VAX 6000 running VMS. There was no special 
hardware.

The VAX 6000 ran a custom application that acted basically as a front 
end for controlling the modems doing all the AT commands and creating a 
log file based on the case number. There were some other bells and 
whistles in the application but 90% of the time it was just a modem dialer.

In Canada the VAX application was called VDIAL,( maybe short for virtual 
dialer)  one of the first questions VDIAL asked was if we were dialing 
to a RDM connected modem on a serial console port or to a modem 
connected to a normal data port. By the time I transferred into the call 
center in 1996 the use of the RDM in the field was in sharp decline. I 
recall only a few cases where I connected to an RDM and those were cases 
where the system was flat down and we needed to see the console messages.

The use of email and the internet has killed off the use of modems for 
remote troubleshooting. We still have some but its been years since I 
used a modem connection.

Brian