Subject: NCSA Telnet Digest V2.11 -------------------------------------------------- NCSA Telnet Digest Monday, 19 December 1988 Volume 2 : Issue 11 ------------------------------------------------------------------- Subjects this issue: Back again, mailing list will be frequent Gaige goes to InterCon Microsoft C 5.0 diffs / Contributions directory NCSA Telnet, ATT PC6300 and MICOM NI5210 boards - problems WD8003A - Western Digital microchannel board query -------------------------------------------------- Well, when I dug up the old mailing list, the last issue was 2.10: NCSA Telnet Digest Thursday, 8 September 1988 Volume 2 : Issue 10 I'm sure some of you gave up on it, but we're back on line. The target frequency is once-per-week, but the backlog of messages is large enough to fill up several more than that over the next few weeks. If we get no contributions, the space will be filled with information about our products and plans. Bug reports and explanations will be shared with the list. Give us another chance, share your experiences; I'm sure the other users on the list will appreciate it. Thank you for your support. Tim Krauskopf Project Leader, NCSA Telnet -------------------------------------------------- Gaige Paulsen has recently started a new job at InterCon Systems Corp. in Reston, VA. InterCon's main product, TCP/Connect is based on the public domain source code of NCSA Telnet for the Macintosh. InterCon's product already includes an FTP client and VT240 emulation including the REGIS graphics. InterCon's phone # is: (703)435-8170. We wish Gaige well and thank him for his irreplaceable contributions to NCSA Telnet. Tim Krauskopf -------------------------------------------------- From: timk@ncsa.uiuc.edu (Tim Krauskopf) Subject: MSC diffs We have created a contributions directory on the anonymous FTP server called NCSA_Telnet/contributions. A tar file with diffs for MSC 5.0 has been posted. IMPORTANT! We have not tested these diffs. We do not guarantee in any way that they will be incorporated into future NCSA Telnet releases. They are user contributed. However, it is our intention to make the next version source compilable under MSC. 1Q '89 is the only time prediction we are making so far. If you find anything dangerous in the MSC diffs or have contributions or improvements, please mail info to telbug@ncsa.uiuc.edu. If there are bugs, remember, these contributions are unsupported. Tim Krauskopf timk@ncsa.uiuc.edu (ARPA) National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign -------------------------------------------------- Subject: NCSA Telnet, ATT PC6300 and MICOM NI5210 boards - problems Thanks for the reply. I will detail for you what the conditions are related to the ncsa telnet not working on the PC6300. First I will begin by mentioning that we have approximately 1000 PC6300s on campus, are completing a campus wide Ethernet system (Thin-wire to every room on campus, fiber backbone, etc.) with extensive use of NI5210 cards with RAF for the administrative systems and seeking to bring online all the PCs for use with the TCP/IP based academic/research systems. As I beleive I mentioned in my previous communication, we use the NI5210 in association with the RAF (DECNET based) product. The use has been extensive and over a two year period and always with the AT&T PC. The AT&T PC6300 is an IBM PC/XT compatible. Early versions (four years ago) presented some compatibility problems, but with current ROM versions and PAL versions, we know of no hardware or software that does not work with it (it is used in all of our teaching and research labs, thus is subjected to just about everything). In all the test results I will report below, no TSRs were loaded into the system and the config.sys files were kept blank (i.e. no RAF or other conflicting drivers). All of our other TCP/IP hosts are happily talking to oneanother, PCs running a commercial TCP/IP package and the NI5010 (not the 5210) card work just fine. We have tried the ncsa telnet with several AT&T PC6300s and with a half dozen different NI5210 cards, using many i/o page, interrupt and memory base address combinations, always getting the same behaviour. Upon loading ncsa telnet everything seems to work well for a period of time ranging from few minutes to as many as 20 minutes. The exact morphology of the crash differs from instance to instance. Usually, the program just suddenly ceases to respond to any user input, presenting a frozen cursor, echoing no input and not responding to hot-keys. Next most common failure mode is that a current telnet session ceases to echo input, but hot-keys do work. If one attempts to open a second session after the failure of the first, the program claims that the host is not responsive (though other machines have no problems at the same instant in time). This second mode will sometimes finally fully crash. A third failure mode is that in which character echoes get progressively more delayed until full crash ensues. An Ethernet monitor shows that the host in fact does echo the character, again and again, until the misbehaving ncsa telnet program finally "sees" one. I have spoken to the folks at Micom-Interlan and they claim no knowledge of problems with the NI5210 in the AT&T PC6300. Finally, we obtained a vanilla PC compatible (Fillarmerica PC) and have run ncsa telnet successfully on it! So, our only conclusion is some strange incompatibity of the NI5210 with the AT&T PC but apparently one which is software resolvable since the RAF software does work! Is there any way that you can broadcast mail to other ncsa telnet sites to find if anyone else has encountered (and hopefully solved) this problem? Thankyou for your help in this matter. Dave Cyganski cyganski@wpi-cs.wpi.edu ------------------------------------------------------------ Date: Thu, 8 Dec 88 09:54 CST From: MACPHEDRAN@SASK.USask.CA Subject: Query about Western Digital MicroChannel Support ... To: telnet@ncsa.uiuc.edu Hello; I am forwarding this for someone who does not have access to electronic mail. Please send return mail to me. Thanks. Ian. ====================================================== Could you please tell me if either Verison 2.2 of NCSA Telnet supports the Western Digital MicroChannel Ethernet card. It is not explicitly mentioned, but would it be accessible through either the WD8003 driver, or the 3C523 driver? Thanks. [ See the contributions directory for source. Wait for next version for released binary. -- TK ]