10 Dec
2021
10 Dec
'21
8:32 p.m.
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.
Chris
10 Dec
10 Dec
9:18 p.m.
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.
paul
11 Dec
11 Dec
2:44 a.m.
On Fri, Dec 10, 2021 at 3:18 PM Paul Koning <paulkoning at comcast.net> wrote:
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.
DECnet-VAX implemented dynamically switching a terminal line to DDCMP
around 1985-1986. The DCL command was something like SET
TERMINAL/PROTOCOL=DDCMP. The idea was to dial into the VAX via modem line,
login, then issue the SET command to start DDCMP. The first release or two
of VMS to implement this was buggy in ways that annoyed a certain NYC-based
customer whom I had to support. ;-)
Bob Leigh
(NY/NJ SWS 1982-1987)
2:48 a.m.
On Dec 10, 2021, at 8:44 PM, Bob Leigh <bobleigh at
twomeeps.com> wrote:
On Fri, Dec 10, 2021 at 3:18 PM Paul Koning <paulkoning at comcast.net> wrote:
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.
DECnet-VAX implemented dynamically switching a terminal line to DDCMP around 1985-1986.
The DCL command was something like SET TERMINAL/PROTOCOL=DDCMP. The idea was to dial into
the VAX via modem line, login, then issue the SET command to start DDCMP. The first
release or two of VMS to implement this was buggy in ways that annoyed a certain NYC-based
customer whom I had to support. ;-)
RSTS/E V10.1 has that exact same command. The missing bits (which I fixed in my code and
posted here a few months ago) were in NCP and the event logger, so without those fixes you
didn't have any documented way to turn on the line in DDCMP mode and give it to DECnet
to use.
paul
2:57 a.m.
Someone said that OPENvms could speak SLIP or PPP.
Can it speak IP and DECnet over PPP?
The protocol allows it.
-P
12:54 p.m.
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
1:19 p.m.
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
3:19 p.m.
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.
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.
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
3:30 p.m.
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-5b1fda51076…
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
4:01 p.m.
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
4:04 p.m.
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-5b1fda51076…
<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
4:13 p.m.
Yes, there are three mezzanine connectors, they use a proprietary socket as
well. Someone backwards engineered the pinout and was able to wire up a
PCIe Ethernet controller on an x64 Proliant blade. I bought a PCIe Ethernet
card compatible with Itanium OpenVMs and wired up one PCIe channel and the
control signals, but I couldn?t get it to work. The connector is really
tiny and it?s definitely possible I made a soldering mistake. I tried 3 or
4 times before giving up.
On Saturday, December 11, 2021, Supratim Sanyal <supratim at riseup.net> wrote:
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-specificati
ons-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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11 comments
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participants (7)
-
bobleigh＠twomeeps.com -
bqt＠softjar.se -
cyb2600＠gmail.com -
paulkoning＠comcast.net -
roll＠stupi.com -
supratim＠riseup.net -
wboerhout＠gmail.com