OT: Perle Rack Communications Server IO LAN

[Brian K. White]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Fairlight" <fairlite at fairlite.com>
To: <filepro-list at lists.celestial.com>
Sent: Thursday, September 18, 2008 5:16 PM
Subject: Re: OT: Perle Rack Communications Server IO LAN


> With neither thought nor caution, Tony Freehauf blurted:
>> OFF TOPIC:
>> Perle Rack Communications Server IO LAN
>> I have a customer that has a "magic box" called a
>> Perle Rack communications Server IO LAN
>> it is running on old SCO Unix 5.05
>> the SCO network cable plugs into the Perle device  & the Perle device  
>> connects to lots of old terminals. Works great.
>> 
>> Would this kind of device work with Linux??
> 
> Assuming we're talking the ones like these:
> 
> http://www.perle.com/products/Terminal-Server.shtml
> 
> ...Those are IOLAN devices.  And they're just terminal servers.  Of course
> they would work with linux, given the proper linux configuration.  That
> goes for any *nix.

It depends on the type of device.
There a few different types of devices that all have a network jack and several serial ports.

There are device/port servers, terminal servers, and console servers.

A console server is the wrong sort of device for hooking terminals to a server so skip those.

Device servers and terminal servers are two differet kinds of things but they can both be used to hook terminals to a server.

Some higher end devices have a feature where they can act as serial to telnet, ssh, or raw tcp proxies. That is, you press enter on a serial port, or you raise or lower some serial control line like dcd, and the device senses this and initiates a telnet or ssh or raw tcp session to the server and connects your serial port to it. That would work fine with any unix (or any os).

Lots of devices don't have that. They just talk to the server via one tcp port talking to the driver on the server, and on the server the driver provides /dev/tty** devices that correspond to the serial ports. The protocol is proprietary and if no driver (and sometimes one or more accompanying server daemons as well) exists for your version of your os, then the device is a paperweight to you. _probably_ such a driver exists for linux, but then again, if the device is old enough that it's currently on a sco 5.0.5 box, many times there actually is no linux driver, or the only linux driver is very old and only works on very old versions of linux.

Device servers are the most likely to require a driver, and ones that need a driver are the cheapest kind, and yet are in some ways the simplest to use with old sofware that just assumes you are logging on on a static serial tty. (IE: ttyfoo01 is always the same physical station, or might be a printer or a modem.) and so, they are actually the most commonly used in the context he described.

So one can't say it will work or not. One can only say "What is the exact model number?" and then go find out from the perle web site or google in general.

You can fairly safely say that even if you find out this particular device won't work, Although a new one might be $2000 there are always some on ebay going for $75 to $300. (assuming 8 to 32 ports, higher port counts are rarer and cost more, or you could just get 2 or more of the smaller ones. I can sell you a 32 port digi for $300 that I know works on opensuse 10, don't know about 11.)

-- 
Brian K. White    brian at aljex.com    http://www.myspace.com/KEYofR
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