Serial-to-Ethernet converters are better known as
terminalserver or portserver.
They have been commonly used at the Vax epoch,
where a single mainframe computer or cluster
was connected to Ethernet (but not necessarily Internet!).
Remote users used telnet
sessions to connect to local (< 1 km)
or remote hosts.
But computer equipment was expensive,
and the standard user terminal was of Falco type,
80 or 132 columns × 24 to 50 lines,
serial RS232 output at 1200 to 9600 bauds.
With the disappearance of Falco terminals, terminalservers also went to
oblivion.
I remembered these terminalservers in 1999,
when I had to find a solution for managing more than
a dozen single board VME-PC CPUs in the
H1 experiment.
These boards are used in a complex VME environment
and far from plug'n play during the development phase.
A boot beyond the firmware monitor is very often not possible,
and two RS232 connections to the outside world are the only "window"
into the systems in case of failure.
Thus started the renaissance of terminalservers. And I had to learn again what I had hoped to avoid: standard DEC syntax (like on Vaxen), with SET/DEFINE, SHOW and all this syntax, which sounds so weird to you, if you have grown up in a Unix environment. |
This page is a mnemonic for me, when coming back to a configuration problem (due to increasing demand!) once every year and just cannot remember that detail about setting up a specific port. It deals with Xyplex servers, as these are the types, which are used at DESY (Hamburg, Germany) and CPPM, my present home institute in Marseille/France, as well. |
Getting Started with MAXServer Access Servers (Nbase-Xyplex documentation) (original location) |
Nbase Xyplex networking solutions forum @ www.tek-tips.com |
MRV (Present vendor/manufacturer of Nbase/Xyplex products) |
Xyplex Terminal Servers BOOTP setup & process (original location @ www.sunmanagers.org) |
MAXServer 1600 example configurations (original location @ cs.sonoma.edu) |
Xyplex @ CPPM (restricted access!) |
MAXserver Specification for 1620 series |
Server command list for configuration, being worked on |