[Info-vax] terminal servers etc

[Rich Jordan]

On Jan 8, 5:17 pm, pe... at langstoeger.at (Peter 'EPLAN' LANGSTOeGER)
wrote:
> In article <e1f0cedb-ab75-4857-9e27-ea31b4b40... at a15g2000vbf.googlegroups.com>, F H <fhs... 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  Pe... at LANGSTOeGER.at
> A-1030 VIENNA  AUSTRIA              I'm not a pessimist, I'm a realist

I think DNAS V2.4 was the last one from DEC.  We sold some DNPG/VNetek
DS90M Plus models to a customer some years later that used
V3.something but it was not compatible with older DS90M models due to
an upgraded firmware/boot ROM requirement.  Sorry, those disks are
buried somewhere strategic so I can't confirm the version or other
differences.