YDKF Episode 149: Networks

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m00npie
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YDKF Episode 149: Networks

Post by m00npie »

Title: YDKF Episode 149: Networks
Date: Sat, 10 May 2014 22:06:08 +0000
Link: http://podcast.robohara.com/?p=454

Description: I’m back at home and back on the mic with another episode of You Don’t Know Flack. This episode is about the exciting world of computer networks! Okay, so maybe it doesn’t sound that exciting, but give it a chance! This episode’s “loading time” is longer than usual as I discuss my experience with a […]
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Flack
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Re: YDKF Episode 149: Networks

Post by Flack »

The cobwebs have been dusted.
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AArdvark
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Re: YDKF Episode 149: Networks

Post by AArdvark »

This episode brought back a lot of memories from when I first started out in the machining field. The company I work for was just getting into the NC and CNC business, before that all the machining was sheet metal related. We'd make tools for the press brakes but that was pretty much it so it was all done by hand. When the owners started to expand into more stand alone machining they bout these really old CNC mills, circa 1980 maybe. It was up to me to get them up and running. Luckily, they knew a guy that was good with the RS232 serial connections and was willing to teach me. We dabbled with punch tape for a while before that. A horrible way to interface. Funny, some of our older machines still have the tape readers built into the back of the machines.
Anyway, we used laplink quite a bit with custom cables to move programs into the download computer and then to the machine tool. I looked up the download software and it's apparently still available. Who knew it'd still be around twenty years later.


THE
VENERABLE
AARDVARK
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Flack
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Re: YDKF Episode 149: Networks

Post by Flack »

A few years ago I was doing security and vulnerability scans for work. I ended up scanning the campus machines and had to walk over and physically scan one because it was not really connected to the network. When I got over there I found this ancient PC connected to an RS-232 interface that was connected to a bunch of null modem cables which eventually link to the electronic door system used by the entire campus. We're talking 30 buildings and maybe 50+ doors per building. I was so afraid to touch that thing and since it didn't connect to the network I told them let's just say I scanned it and we'll call it a don't ask/don't tell. :)
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Re: YDKF Episode 149: Networks

Post by KHoos »

Just got around to listening to this episode. I did notice you don't mention the forum as a way to respond to the podcast, but I'll stick to what works for me.
Lots of fun and somewhat recognizable stuff in this episode for me, although games were never the reason to run a network for me. A multiline BBS was, with at first netware lite for the server. Being able to work on echomail/netmail while the BBS was up and running and taking calls! Later linux/samba with the nearly impossible to find lan manager client for DOS.
The house is not complete without a server running!
Koos van den Hout, [url]http://idefix.net/[/url]
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Re: YDKF Episode 149: Networks

Post by Flack »

You know you are always welcome to leave feedback via the forum! I quit plugging it because last year we got three new users. Two of them never posted and the third one died.
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ubikuberalles

Re: YDKF Episode 149: Networks

Post by ubikuberalles »

Flack wrote:Two of them never posted and the third one died.


Now I'm sad because I knew the one who died. :(

My experience with Networks is radically different than yours, Rob, because I got into the business a good 10 years before you did. I didn't see much networking in college because the terminals you used were connected directly to the computer via RS-232 cables. Later on the terminals were connected to terminal servers and you could communicate with a number of different machines using telnet. I had heard that various computers on campus could send e-mail to computers in other parts of the country but that was stuff mostly for the grad students and the professors.

I didn't get directly involved in networking until I started working at Philips Semiconductors (called Signetics then). The main computer systems were two VAX 780 computers. These machines were 5 ft tall and about 7 ft wide and both had a 5ftX6Ft box next to them. These boxes were, essentially the I/O modules for the system: in the back were something like 80-100 RS232 DB-26 plugs that would connect to individual terminals. A lot of wires and they would connect to individual terminals. RS232 had a limited range - a couple hundred feet - and it could not reach to the other end of the building where the manufacturing guys (engineers, supervisors, techs and so on) could access them. IF they wanted to use the VAX they had to walk from the manufacturing end of the building to a terminal room not far from the VAX. That sucked.

The solution was to connect the RS-232 to MUX/DEMUX boxes: 16 ports from the VAX would connect to a MUX/DEMUX unit where signals from the individual ports would be woven into packets and those packets would be sent down a long telephone wire to the other end of the plant where it was connected to another MUX/DEMUX unit that would split the bits in the packet into the 16 terminals plugged into the unit. When I first learned about that, I thought that was cool.

Before long those MUX/DEMUX were replaced with terminal servers that communicated to each other via thickwire ethernet using the LAT protocol. Eventually the VAXes (actually VAXen is the correct plural of VAX) would communicate with each other using DECnet but during my early years there data from the testers reached the main engineering VAX via "sneakernet": a 9 track tape recorded the data at the test site and we would carry it from the tester's tape drive to the VAX's tape drive.

Eventually we had TCP/IP installed on the VAX (which DEC charged us thousands of dollars) and sneaker net went away. Our plant became more and more multi-platform when PDP-11's were replaced with Sun and HP boxes and tcpip was needed. However, it was mostly the PCs that forced the company to pony up the cash for tcpip on our VAXen: PCs didn't know DECNet (well, they did but the DECnet interface between PC and VAX pretty much sucked)..

I didn't mess with networking on a PC until I bought my first PC and connected it to the plant's network. I then had to learn about the config files and NetBUI like you mentioned in the podcast.

Even now my experience with networks is different than yours, Rob, because I do mostly network configuration for Linux boxes. I've done so much of it in the past 10 years that it's second nature to me: I can do it in my sleep. Windows networking I have to do wide awake and sometimes it confuses me. It gets easier and easier as newer versions of Windows come out (especially wireless. Wireless networking on Windows is so much easier than Linux).
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