At 18:46 09/01/2004 -0500, you wrote:
> I picked up two of these yesterday. I searched the net but didn't find
>much information about them but I did find enough so that I know what they
>are. However one of the ones that I have doesn't have the rounded top.
>Instead the top is flat and it has a rectangular opening in it and a
>circuit board sticking up into the opening. It looks like it was made for
>an expansion chassis to mate with. Anybody know more about that?
>
> Joe
Ah ha someone else :-)
If it's one that looks a bit like this (googled) one here:
http://www.itsinfonet.com/e_gif.htm
then yep, you just stacked expansion units on top until you were done.
I had a customer in the early 90s that had one of these with about five
expansion units on top; mostly hard disc expansion. I remember it having
several 600Mb hard discs, the biggest they could get at the time. ISTR it
ran a Unix SVR4. I wrote some very nifty software that scanned their
previous sales history, and could do tailored mailshots depending on such
curious parameters as products that customer had NOT bought previously :-)
[only send special offers on a product to people who didn't buy it already,
that way you don't offer discounts to people you don't need to, who carry
on buying at higher price! sneaky] Their sales director had some really
daft combinations of conditions I ended up writing a RPN based language to
drive the reporting engine in order to accommodate them
Anyway, I've actually got one too, with one expansion unit on top, sat in a
box that I picked up elsewhere, which I've not so much as powered up
yet. Is there anything to worry about with these ones? I KNOW it's not
been touched for at least eight years, and possibly longer. At some point
I'll hook it up to the network and see if I can get it to do something
useful! At least it's small enough to have out and I can hide it in my
server cupboard. I'm presuming it's got a serial tty connection on it
somewhere? I've no idea what IP address it might have (though could find
out, if it broadcasts anything, by watching the network, I am sure.)
Anybody have any info on getting root on these things out there? Would it
be better to put NetBSD on it? (I use FreeBSD for most everything else
network-wise, so probably less alien to me than anything else.)
Rob
Received on Sat Jan 10 2004 - 04:37:42 GMT