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

[Supratim Sanyal]

On 12/11/21 9:19 AM, cyb 2600 wrote:

> Yes, it’s the console line. The blade has an “SUV” connector on the 
> front that splits into a serial port, vga and two USB ports. I’ll run 
> a “show dev” and see what kind of device openVMS thinks it is. I can 
> use the vga and usb keyboard/mouse as the console instead once it 
> boots past all the EFI stuff.

What is a "GBX" signal connector at the rear ?

https://hugepdf.com/download/hp-integrity-bl860c-specifications-5b1fda510762c_pdf

https://support.hpe.com/hpesc/public/docDisplay?docId=emr_na-c02230214 
(870c - probably close enough)

> These blades were never designed to be ran outside of a chassis so I’m 
> trying to make it do something it was never designed to do.  But it 
> was only $60 on eBay so I thought it would be a fun project.

Did the $60 include the processors and memory?

Best,
/s.


>
> On Saturday, December 11, 2021, Wilm Boerhout <wboerhout at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>     It is the console serial line on the Itanium if I followed this
>     correctly . Some regular console output may not be redirected and
>     disturb the DDCMP protocol.
>
>     Groet,
>     Wilm
>
>     (Verstuurd vanaf mijn telefoon, dus wat korter dan gewoonlijk.)
>     (Sent from my phone, so a bit more compact than usual)
>
>     > Op 11 dec. 2021 om 12:55 heeft Johnny Billquist <bqt at softjar.se>
>     het volgende geschreven:
>     >
>     > On 2021-12-10 20:32, cyb 2600 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.
>     >
>     > Others have already said a lot. But to just add a little more.
>     > As mentioned, at least on VAXen, you can run DECnet over a
>     serial line. It might very well be possible also on Alpha and
>     Itanium. Check the docs. Even if it isn't officially supported,
>     just try turning it on. In VMS, the async DDCMP connections are
>     done over the normal terminal driver, so I would suspect there is
>     a fair chance it works, unless they actually ripped that code out.
>     >
>     > However, if we talk HECnet, this isn't enough. You then need to
>     get that serial looped back into something that can connect to
>     some remote side.
>     > My original HECnet links were actually done this way. I had
>     physical serial ports on machines, then then I had another machine
>     at each end to which the serial ports connected, and between these
>     two other machines, I ran a simple program that just forwarded the
>     bytes on the serial ports on both sides.
>     >
>     > It worked, but of course this is slow, as it was just 9600 bps.
>     So eventually I wrote my bridge program to just forward ethernet
>     packets instead.
>     >
>     > But in your case, you'd need something like this again. I think
>     you might be able to just hook it up to PyDECnet. It has DDCMP,
>     and I would hope it could be convinced to talk over an actual
>     serial port. If it can't, I'm sure Paul could fix that.
>     >
>     >  Johnny
>     >
>     > --
>     > Johnny Billquist                  || "I'm on a bus
>     >                                  ||  on a psychedelic trip
>     > email: bqt at softjar.se            ||  Reading murder books
>     > pdp is alive!                     ||  tryin' to stay hip" - B. Idol
>
-- 
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