[HECnet] Connecting an HP Itanium BL860c to HECNET... without ethernet
Supratim Sanyal
supratim at riseup.net
Sat Dec 11 07:04:56 PST 2021
On 12/11/21 10:01 AM, cyb 2600 wrote:
> 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.
There seems to a riser you can get ("mezzanine") that has standard PCIe
1x / 4x to which it might be possible to stick in a standard Intel PCIe
NIC. What OpenVMS would do with it I have no idea.
Anyway, interesting project, following this with attention.
Thanks.
> 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://hugepdf.com/download/hp-integrity-bl860c-specifications-5b1fda510762c_pdf>
>
> https://support.hpe.com/hpesc/public/docDisplay?docId=emr_na-c02230214
> <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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