Re: [Simh] terminal multiplexers

[Phil Budne]

Al Kossow wrote:
> On 11/12/15 5:25 AM, Patrick Finnegan wrote:
> > DEC's DECserver, Xyplex Maxserver, Annex terminal servers, and Xylogics

Didn't Xylogics buy the Annex from Encore?

> UB was XNS 

Boston University had a terminal network that ran over CATV wiring.
I'm not sure I ever knew what protocols were being used for "native"
services. We also wired up the UB boxes via parallel port to VAXen and
ran TCP/IP between VAXen (4.2BSD and VMS).

An even earlier generation of "terminal network" was the Gandalf switch.
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Re: [Simh] terminal multiplexers

[Johnny Billquist]

On 2015-11-12 22:19, Alan Frisbie wrote:

On 11/12/2015 01:15 PM, Johnny Billquist wrote:


The DECservers 200s were rock solid performers in our engineering
offices and on the factory floor.


Agreed. 200 and 300 were/are great.


How did the Decserver 700 compare against the others?   Did it do telnet
also?


Hi, Alan.
Good question. I've never seen one, so I can't say.

Johnny

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Re: [Simh] terminal multiplexers

[Tim Wilkinson]

Back in about 84. We were users of bridge cs200 serial boxes. Communicating
to a unibus board in a borrowed 780. From memory the network communication
was a xerox protocol. A while later we were given a 750 to which we moved
the unibus adaptor. And subsequently upgraded to tcp/ip which required a
sco device to act as a bind server.

The cs200 was a good device. It enabled us to bind serial ports across the
network. Allowing me to connect process control kit to expensive laser
printer s. And also provided network service connection enabling me to
create virtual port connectivity to sun workstation. Etc. Lots of reading
Stevens networking books back then.

Eventually with the rise of Dec terminal servers and lat. Lantronix
produced a good cheap multi protocol devicr
On 12 Nov 2015 21:27, "Johnny Billquist"  wrote:

> On 2015-11-12 22:19, Alan Frisbie wrote:
>
>> On 11/12/2015 01:15 PM, Johnny Billquist wrote:
>>
>> The DECservers 200s were rock solid performers in our engineering
 offices and on the factory floor.

>>>
>>> Agreed. 200 and 300 were/are great.
>>>
>>
>> How did the Decserver 700 compare against the others?   Did it do telnet
>> also?
>>
>
> Hi, Alan.
> Good question. I've never seen one, so I can't say.
>
> Johnny
>
> --
> Johnny Billquist  || "I'm on a bus
>   ||  on a psychedelic trip
> email: b...@softjar.se ||  Reading murder books
> pdp is alive! ||  tryin' to stay hip" - B. Idol
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Re: [Simh] terminal multiplexers

[Tim Wilkinson]

Thinking back to those times. The other battle within the office Dec v Unix
camp was for the dominant terminal server protocol. Never put it to bed as
so much invested in Dec lay devices. Bridge tcp/ip devices. So only one
solution. Woolengong tcp/ip on the VAX systems and lat emulation on the sun
servers.
On 12 Nov 2015 22:08, "Tim Wilkinson"  wrote:

> Back in about 84. We were users of bridge cs200 serial boxes.
> Communicating to a unibus board in a borrowed 780. From memory the network
> communication was a xerox protocol. A while later we were given a 750 to
> which we moved the unibus adaptor. And subsequently upgraded to tcp/ip
> which required a sco device to act as a bind server.
>
> The cs200 was a good device. It enabled us to bind serial ports across the
> network. Allowing me to connect process control kit to expensive laser
> printer s. And also provided network service connection enabling me to
> create virtual port connectivity to sun workstation. Etc. Lots of reading
> Stevens networking books back then.
>
> Eventually with the rise of Dec terminal servers and lat. Lantronix
> produced a good cheap multi protocol devicr
> On 12 Nov 2015 21:27, "Johnny Billquist"  wrote:
>
>> On 2015-11-12 22:19, Alan Frisbie wrote:
>>
>>> On 11/12/2015 01:15 PM, Johnny Billquist wrote:
>>>
>>> The DECservers 200s were rock solid performers in our engineering
> offices and on the factory floor.
>

 Agreed. 200 and 300 were/are great.

>>>
>>> How did the Decserver 700 compare against the others?   Did it do telnet
>>> also?
>>>
>>
>> Hi, Alan.
>> Good question. I've never seen one, so I can't say.
>>
>> Johnny
>>
>> --
>> Johnny Billquist  || "I'm on a bus
>>   ||  on a psychedelic trip
>> email: b...@softjar.se ||  Reading murder books
>> pdp is alive! ||  tryin' to stay hip" - B. Idol
>> ___
>> Simh mailing list
>> Simh@trailing-edge.com
>> http://mailman.trailing-edge.com/mailman/listinfo/simh
>
>
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Re: [Simh] terminal multiplexers

[Clem Cole]

​below..​

On Thu, Nov 12, 2015 at 2:08 PM, Rich Alderson <
s...@alderson.users.panix.com> wrote:

> Hmm.  Come to think of it, the purpose of these was to convert serial lines
> to telnet.  My first encounter with "milking machine mode" (telnet to
> serial
> lines) was a Cisco ASM connected to an IBM 4994 (headless Series/1) to
> allow
> telnet into the IBM 4381s at LOTS, which was around 1989 and hardly early.
> I don't know whether earlier Cisco terminal servers or Stanford EtherTIPs
> (as they were called) had that capability in the standard software load.
>

​Great point.  When do we start differentiate them?  A few interesting
factoids/ pieces if history that I lived to follow:

First if we exclude the front end idea (more in a minute) and think purely
of serial to network converter like 3Com, Bridge, UB, etc, the first one I
ran into was a box at Tek Labs (Tektronix) called the  Network Interface
Black Box (aka NIBB) by the same folks that developed the 68K UNIX Magnolia
Workstation (a couple of years before Sun and Apollo).

The NIBB was a Z80 with some custom SW and MSI TTL to talk to originally an
ethernet-like stream we had developed and were using to show off the idea
of an "instrument controller".  But we used a lot of them to connect glass
TTYs to our 11/70 and 11/60 UNIX systems.IIRC, there were a couple of
flavors of NIBBs but the serial version supported 2 serial ports since that
was what Zilog support with their "SCC" dual USART chip.​  Again, memory is
fading here, I think when we got the first 3Com boards (Tek Labs was 3Com's
first customer - a different but fun story), I think we upgraded the NIBBs
to run a true 10 M ethernet.  (But an issue at the time was the cost of the
ethernet transceivers which were about $500 ea plus $100 transceiver cable
in 1979 dollars - which I recall was about the same price as a NIBB itself).

That said, Rich made me remember something else.  In the early/mid 1970s we
used to use mini-computers to connect to terminals and connect the minis to
larger/more expensive systems - aka a terminal concentrator.   At CMU we
called this the "Front End."   This was done for a couple of purposes: it
allowed the terminal driver to pulled out of the PDP-10 and OS work like
echo, canonicalization, etc was moved upstream so on the 10s saw "cooked"
data; and it also meant that you did not need a big peg board (like what I
would see at UCB a few years later).  All terminals were connected that FE
and then it connected you to which ever system you desired (at CMU CS in
the 70s - this was the 3 PDP-10's and C.mmp).

I'm pretty sure MIT & Stanford had something similar, in fact I believe
that the old MIT SUPDUP protocol (and alternative to Telnet) was created
for just this sort of use.

BTW, CMU/MIT et al were not unusual in this type of Front End configuration
at the time.  Commercial folks did it too.  I remember that there was
timesharing service in Pittsburgh's North side that sold time on a few
PDP-10's that  a number of my friends worked.  All the terminals came into
two 11/45's which then switched up back to the 10s.  Even the IBM types
like Mellon Bank (and I believe the airline systems) used to use PDP11's to
do that type of trick because it was just cheaper to connect to a
mini-computer than directly to the mainframe.

In fact, a few years later a former boss of mine and one-time head of East
Coast regional sale for IBM, once told me he believed that the primary
reason IBM developed the Series 1 Mini was because IBM was losing so many
sites to PDP-11s for front end work.  i.e. they sold it as a terminal
concentrator.

Also, by the late 1970s, when the Vaxen started to show up at CMU and there
were more than just the 4 big systems; CMU started to develop the
"distributed Front End" - which originally was being done on LSI-11s and
3Meg Xerox ethernet.  I played with/helped hack one some of this before I
left for Tek Labs; as we were trying to get all the main systems across
campus on a big network, so you get to a EE or CS system from Mellon
Institute which was about a mile away.I know that the Distributed Front
End was eventually moved to 8085's on Multibus boxes from the LSI-11s.  A
project that Phil Karn (aka KA9Q or sometimes just lovingly known as "the
nerd") and I did was build a tape system for one these for the graduate RT
time compute class.   Phil and I cons's up a C compiler for the 8080 and I
remember the distributed front end folks asking for it (which I have no
idea where the sources are today).

My memory was that the multibus ethernet board needed the space of a full
multibus board, but it was still cheaper than the LSI-11 solution.   If he
did not directly worked on it, Belchteshiem certainly knew about that
scheme as he was knocking around the CMU HW lab in those days (i.e. before
he went to Stanford a few years later and did the Sun-1 and their
distributed front end).

The point of all this being and to answer the question of how far back it

Re: [Simh] terminal multiplexers

[Eric Smith]

Gee, Johnny .. don't be so negative.

Just kidding!

But seriously, this is all such a "blast from the past" .. I didn't
start as early as many of you guys, but I certainly remember building
many, many servers by getting the machine up far enough that it would
run a serial port, then going back to my desk, "telnet-ing" in through
an Annex or some other terminal server, and building the thing the
rest of the way .. installing the OS, configuring the network, adding
storage .. everything.

Eric kd5uwl

> On Nov 12, 2015, at 7:51 AM, Johnny Billquist  wrote:
>
>> On 2015-11-12 06:03, Jacob Goense wrote:
>> Simh simulates a telnet speaking terminal multiplexer.
>> What were the primordial real systems actually doing this?
>
> Maybe I missed it, but what terminal multiplexor do simh simulate?
> Or what do you mean by a terminal multiplexor here?
>
> Are you simply talking about the fact that simh sets up a telnet port for 
> incoming connections, and distribute these to multiple simulated serial ports?
>
> I mean, serial ports on computers are nothing new. And having controllers 
> with multiple serial ports is also nothing new.
>
> The fact that simh can simulate these, and map them to telnet ports do not 
> make a terminal multiplexor of any sort.
>
>Johnny
>
> --
> Johnny Billquist  || "I'm on a bus
>  ||  on a psychedelic trip
> email: b...@softjar.se ||  Reading murder books
> pdp is alive! ||  tryin' to stay hip" - B. Idol
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Re: [Simh] terminal multiplexers

[Patrick Finnegan]

DEC's DECserver, Xyplex Maxserver, Annex terminal servers, and Xylogics
(for the ones I have touched and remember) all converted telnet into real
RS/EIA-232 lines. (telnet client -> host serial, or serial terminal -> host
telnet server)

These days the Cyclades ones aren't too bad. Newer ones turn ssh into
serial lines, and are useful for aggregating serial consoles.

On Thu, Nov 12, 2015 at 12:03 AM, Jacob Goense  wrote:

> Simh simulates a telnet speaking terminal multiplexer.
> What were the primordial real systems actually doing this?
>
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Re: [Simh] terminal multiplexers

[Johnny Billquist]

On 2015-11-12 06:03, Jacob Goense wrote:

Simh simulates a telnet speaking terminal multiplexer.
What were the primordial real systems actually doing this?


Maybe I missed it, but what terminal multiplexor do simh simulate?
Or what do you mean by a terminal multiplexor here?

Are you simply talking about the fact that simh sets up a telnet port 
for incoming connections, and distribute these to multiple simulated 
serial ports?


I mean, serial ports on computers are nothing new. And having 
controllers with multiple serial ports is also nothing new.


The fact that simh can simulate these, and map them to telnet ports do 
not make a terminal multiplexor of any sort.


Johnny

--
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  ||  on a psychedelic trip
email: b...@softjar.se ||  Reading murder books
pdp is alive! ||  tryin' to stay hip" - B. Idol
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Re: [Simh] terminal multiplexers

[Armistead, Jason BIS]

Patrick Finnegan  wrote:

>DEC's DECserver, Xyplex Maxserver, Annex terminal servers, and Xylogics (for 
>the ones I have touched and remember) all converted telnet into
> real RS/EIA-232 lines. (telnet client -> host serial, or serial terminal -> 
> host telnet server)

The early DECservers like the DECserver 100 & 200 models only spoke LAT 
protocol to host systems, and required a MOP boot file download to get up and 
running.  The early models had a Motorola 68000 CPU inside them, and just 
enough firmware in EPROM to do some basic startup diagnostics and complete the 
MOP boot.  The later DECserver 90M (introduced circa mid 1990s) was one of the 
first to support Telnet in addition to LAT, and had all their firmware on board.

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DECserver for a bit of an overview of the 
various models and capabilities.

I originally used DECserver 200s running LAT on our VAX/VMS systems, but I 
believe it was also available on PDPs (running RSX ?) and Ultrix / OSF/1 / 
Digital Unix, and nowadays there is even an open source LAT and MOP daemon 
implementation for Linux.

The DECservers 200s were rock solid performers in our engineering offices and 
on the factory floor.



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Re: [Simh] terminal multiplexers

[Al Kossow]

On 11/12/15 5:25 AM, Patrick Finnegan wrote:

DEC's DECserver, Xyplex Maxserver, Annex terminal servers, and Xylogics
(for the ones I have touched and remember) all converted telnet into
real RS/EIA-232 lines.


And Ungerman-Bass and Bridge Communications CS/200 before that. I think 
Bridge was the first TCP/IP serial bridge. UB was XNS and Net/One was 
one of the first 3rd party Ethernet products.


The Jim Pelkey book is now on line
www.historyorfcomputercommunications.info/Book/BookIndex.html




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Re: [Simh] terminal multiplexers

[Al Kossow]

On 11/12/15 8:52 AM, Al Kossow wrote:


The Jim Pelkey book is now on line
www.historyofcomputercommunications.info/Book/BookIndex.html



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Re: [Simh] terminal multiplexers

[Rich Alderson]

> From: Al Kossow 
> Date: Thu, 12 Nov 2015 08:52:27 -0800

> On 11/12/15 5:25 AM, Patrick Finnegan wrote:

>> DEC's DECserver, Xyplex Maxserver, Annex terminal servers, and Xylogics
>> (for the ones I have touched and remember) all converted telnet into real
>> RS/EIA-232 lines.

> And Ungerman-Bass and Bridge Communications CS/200 before that. I think
> Bridge was the first TCP/IP serial bridge. UB was XNS and Net/One was one
> of the first 3rd party Ethernet products.

Does the Bridge box predate the Stanford terminal servers based on the SUN-1
processor board, like the Stanford routers?  These were the predecessor of
the offerings from 'cisco Systems (the original spelling).

Hmm.  Come to think of it, the purpose of these was to convert serial lines
to telnet.  My first encounter with "milking machine mode" (telnet to serial
lines) was a Cisco ASM connected to an IBM 4994 (headless Series/1) to allow
telnet into the IBM 4381s at LOTS, which was around 1989 and hardly early.
I don't know whether earlier Cisco terminal servers or Stanford EtherTIPs
(as they were called) had that capability in the standard software load.

Hmm.  A brief look at the Pelkey book says that it doesn't appear to address
academic developments like the Stanford University Network, miles of 3Mbit
Ethernet cable run through the steam tunnels c. 1980.

Rich
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