[Info-vax] terminal servers etc

[Peter 'EPLAN' LANGSTOeGER]

In article <e1f0cedb-ab75-4857-9e27-ea31b4b40405 at a15g2000vbf.googlegroups.com>, F H <fhsjvl at gmail.com> writes:
>For those who want to find a DECserver 90M on eBay or somewhere else:
>please note that not all DECserver 90M terminal servers have a flash
>memory card present!

Iff you find a DECserver90M on EBAY, they are gross overpriced. YMMV

>There are two or even three types of 90M devices:
>
>- Those without a flash card. They can be recognized by the absence of
>an inscription on the front panel. They rely on MOP to download their
>OS.

They might exists, but I've never seen that one so far ;-)

>- Those with a 1 MB flash card. They have the inscription "1M Flash"
>on the front panel. The OS is on that flash card but it takes several
>minutes to decompress the OS on the flash card into memory. They will
>download the OS over the network only when a special procedure is
>followed at power-on time.

Can load only MNENG2.SYS (DNAS compressed) into flash (and MNENG1)
Can load MNENG2.SYS and MNENG3.SYS (and even MNENG1.SYS) via MOP.
No special procedure for downloading the file over MOP (only time)

>- It seems that a version exists with a 2 MB (or more) flash card.
>This system boots stand-alone too and very fast because there is no
>decompression to be done. I have however never seen this version.

Can load both MNENG2.SYS (but what for?) and MNENG3.SYS (DNAS
uncompressed) into flash (and even MNENG1.SYS)
Can load MNENG2.SYS and MNENG3.SYS (and MNENG1.SYS) via MOP.
2MB flash, not more. And I had them at home (until they died).

DECserver 90TL couldn't run the DNAS, because of RAM limitation
(so unfortunately only MNENG1.SYS - original 90TL SW - did run)
DECserver 90M could run DNAS and original 90TL SW (but what for?)

Digital Network Access Software (DNAS) was the full blown
DECserver software (eg. SLIP, PPP, IPX, Appletalk, TN3270,
Kerberos, Menu Macros, Radius, SecurID, what else?)
while the older 90TL (and of course also older DNAS) software
had *a lot* less features (problem was also, that the printed
docs were always older than the loaded software in them,
and so were useless => built-in help was always the way to go)

IIRC, last DNAS version I saw was V2.4 from 2001 or so and its
boot/login message was "Network Access SW Vy.x BLnn for DS90TL"
(So, a DECserver 90M is a 90TL with only more RAM and flash
in contrast to DECserver 90L and 90L+ which are "different")

-- 
Peter "EPLAN" LANGSTÖGER
Network and OpenVMS system specialist
E-mail  Peter at LANGSTOeGER.at
A-1030 VIENNA  AUSTRIA              I'm not a pessimist, I'm a realist