[HECnet] Connecting an HP Itanium BL860c to HECNET... without ethernet

[Thomas DeBellis]

I know VMS at least did /some/ kind of line.  Columbia's chemistry 
department got a VAX before the campus Ethernet existed, so that 
wouldn't have been an option.

However, I can't remember whether it was a synchronous or asynchronous 
connection; only that the 'wire' went into one of our DN20's (I think 
CU20B).  I /think/ the 'wire' had modems on both sides, but I can't 
remember what those were, either.

On 12/10/21 3:24 PM, Mark Pizzolato - Info Comm wrote:
> On Friday, December 10, 2021 at 12:19 PM, Paul Koning wrote:
>>> On Dec 10, 2021, at 2:32 PM, cyb 2600<cyb2600 at gmail.com>  wrote:
>>>
>>> Hello,
>>>
>>> A little while ago I purchased an HP BL860c server blade. It has an Itanium 2
>> CPU and I was able to install OpenVMS 8.4 on it. However I do NOT have a HP
>> Bladesystem chassis to put the blade in, meaning I can only connect to it via
>> the SUV console cable which provides usb, serial, and VGA. There's no way to
>> get ethernet out of the thing without plugging it into a rather gigantic
>> Bladesystem chassis that I don't have. If it was an x64 based blade running
>> windows I could just use a USB->Ethernet adapter but of course those things
>> don't have OpenVMS drivers.
>>> Given ethernet's not an option, would there be any way to tunnel DECNET
>> over the serial port? It seems like that was possible on VAXen and maybe
>> even Alphas but I've no mention of doing it on an Itanium. Or if anybody else
>> has any ideas of how I could network this thing I would appreciate it.
>>
>> I don't know that VMS ever did it, but a number of DECnet systems support
>> DDCMP over async lines (terminal serial ports).  That's part of the standard.
> VAX/VMS certainly did async DDCMP.  I've no idea if that functionality got
> migrated to Alpha and Itanium.  I'd suggest you try following the VMS example.
> If you can get the configuration steps to work (suggesting Itanium support) then
> this should work with a serial line going into a simh VAX.
>
> Good Luck,
>
> - Mark
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