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

[cyb 2600]

The GBX connectors are 100 pin (I think?) sockets that connect it to the
bladesystem chassis. The blade actually does have 4 NICs built into it but
the output is serdes encoded. The serial output channels go out the GBX
connectors which go to the bladesystem controller, which decodes them and
sends them to actual Ethernet ports.

The iLo Ethernet isn’t serdes,  you can actually wire it straight to an
RJ45 connector. I don’t think you can use it from within OpenVMS though, at
least you shouldn’t be able to.

$60 included one dual core CPU and that’s it. I got the 10k SAS hard
drives, registered RAM, power supply, and some fans for cooling from an old
HP Proliant server from the same era. Even with the fans I can’t run it
with the lid on, it overheats in 10 minutes.  I was able to install OpenVMS
by DDing the iso to a thumb drive and plugging it into one of the USB ports
on the front.

On Saturday, December 11, 2021, Supratim Sanyal <supratim at riseup.net> wrote:

> 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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