A little guidance - TI Xenix

From: Ward Griffiths and/or Lisa Rogers <gram_at_cnct.com>
Date: Sun Jun 29 16:43:11 1997

On Sun, 29 Jun 1997, Brett wrote:

> You are 100% correct Ward. This is the major failing of just anybody
> trying to setup and run Windows NT as a business server. There's the box
> here's my boot disk - Where do you want to go today? 8-)

For the company Notes system, the NT Servers are in the same room. It's
an insurance company -- they've gotten into the security habit strongly
since they installed about the third production Univac I that was ever
made back about the time I was born.

> > To enter the machine room where I work I have to exchange the card-key
> > that gives me access to the building for one that gives me access to
> > that room -- and I have to trade back if I want to go outside to smoke
> > a cigarette.
>
> That's cool! Very professional. Do they body search you before you go in
> and after you come out? Hmmm... Cigarettes - another thread!

Well, I find much of the discussion about getting the yellowing from tar
and nicotine off of the cases to be rather irrelevant -- for almost of
twenty years, my nocturnal hacking has been with an overflowing ashtray on
one side of the keyboard and a twelve-pack of something above 3.2% on the
other. Yes, I Windex the screens -- the yellowing of off-white cases I
find relaxing. (I live in New Jersey, but I'm from Los Angeles -- that
means that while the groundwater is fine, due to the lack of an inversion
layer the air is lacking in essential vitamins -- two generations in L.A.
and evolution worked. I _need_ the supplementary carbon monoxide, and
jogging behind busses is too much like exercise.)

> Found it in a cron file. It's called rct0 (I thought I tried that before
> I wrote the list- oh well!)

Yeah, I recall the device name. It was unique to QIC drives under Xenix,
as far as I can recall -- though there might have been carryover into SCO
Unix -- I've never set up a SCO Unix system with one.

> > Computone is best known for multi-port serial boards. These are probably
> > 8-port boards to connect to terminals. What do the connectors on these
> > boards look like?
>
> ?62 pin D-shells? With my eyes - it hard to tell. Smallest row has 20 and
> three rows of pins in the *dongle*. That *Dongle* wieghs in at about 7
> lbs! I have three dongles and 2 cards for 16 ports. If I had one more
> card - 24 9.6k baud modems - I could use up a T1 8-)

That's the connector to connect an eight-port box to the board -- _all_
of the signals for all eight serial ports are present on that connector
-- figuring which pin is which line on which port is the next best thing
to do without a schematic or the box to dissect.

> > > SPA initialization complete

> > Yes, 'SPA' probably stands for 'serial port adapter'.

> Aside - What the heck is that shorty card in there? All epoxied up.
> Says TI on it. Metal shield. Any ideas?

Damfino -- never did a TI Xenix system. Did Xenix on Tandy, Altos, and
with SCO a shitload of 386 platforms, but not TI.

> Don't recognize anything on it that has a name I know. Full 1/4 inch
> on a DC600 tape (I now have one blank 8-) Yup - got the tape to work!

Cool. Those mini-QIC drives have never given me _anything_ but grief.
Received on Sun Jun 29 1997 - 16:43:11 BST