[Info-vax] Change MAC on network card

[Johnny Billquist]

On 2023-04-08 00:27, Stephen Hoffman wrote:
> On 2023-04-07 21:02:52 +0000, Johnny Billquist said:
> 
> 
>> DEQNA and DELQA works the same. In fact, in most ways, they are 
>> compatible enough that the same software can be used with either 
>> hardware without changes.
> 
> Albeit DEQNA won't work on VAX/VMS V5.4-2 and later, and also had an 
> unrequited love of screaming.

I know. But that was because of how buggy the firmware is, which was 
never fixed. The card is still supported on the PDP-11 side, but at 
least RSX have some specific code in there to detect DEQNA going dead, 
and kick it to restart it when it happens. I guess VMS people just got 
tired of having to deal with that broken hardware.

If it explicitly "won't work" on VMS V5.4-2 or later, then it would be 
the software explicitly detecting it to be a DEQNA and refuse to run. 
Because interface wise, it works the same as the DELQA. But there are 
bits in there to identify which it is.
Then there is the DELQA-Plus, which do have a different interfacing. I 
would guess VMS supports that too. RSX do not, and run the DELQA-Plus in 
plain DELQA mode. :-(

> DEQNA is one of the very few supported features that was intentionally 
> removed, too.

Yeah. And to be honest, I do not like the DEQNA. I actually do not like 
the DELQA either. It's better, but it's still problematic. Can't 
understand why DEC made such a poor interface to those controllers. The 
DEUNA/DELUA is way better, and was done at the same time.

I can only assume that because the DEQNA don't have a generic CPU in 
there (if I got things right), they made an interface that was "easy" to 
implement with the logic that do exists on the card.

   Johnny