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From: nerd@percival.rain.com (Michael Galassi)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next
Subject: Re: Mouse-X over the phone
Message-ID: <1991Mar19.004418.14226@percy.rain.com>
Date: 19 Mar 91 00:44:18 GMT
References: <1991Mar14.204058.1474@wam.umd.edu> <1991Mar15.120533.1@capd.jhuapl.edu>
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In article <1991Mar15.120533.1@capd.jhuapl.edu> waltrip@capd.jhuapl.edu writes:
>In article <1991Mar14.204058.1474@wam.umd.edu>, mikec@wam.umd.edu (Michael D. 
>Callaghan) writes:
>>Now that I have Mouse-X up and running (thanks to the authors for a job
>>well done), is there any way that I can interface my NeXT here at home
>>with the VAXes at school? 
>	In theory, yes, but the pieces aren't there.  You need a (supported)
>	transport for shipping X protocol between the X clients and your
>	Mouse-X server.

There is a low cost solution to all those who like me NEED slip.  Buy an
ibm/pc clone, put an ethernet board and a serial port in it and run pcroute.
You can get pcroute off uunet and many other places (look it up in archie).
I run 3 slip links, one to a vax running vms, the other two going to pcs
similar to mine w/ pcroute, one hiding a next, the other an SCO Xenix box.

The pc has two advantages.  First is resources.  With pcroute dealing
with the serial link you only take the interupt overhead once for each
ethernet packet that comes in, not for each byte.  Second is cost.  You
only need a super cheap clone which you can usualy find used for ~$100
and an ethernet board which should be between $100 & $150.  Software is
free.

My setup has an 8 MHz nec v20, a western digital WD8003e board, and three
standard serial ports.  The cpu currently is driving an Intel 9600ex at
19200 bps, a USR courier at 2400 bps, and a weco 212a at 1200 bps with
no problems, I don't know yet how it will do when we up the speed on the
two low speed lines.  I may have to upgrade to a 12 MHz '286 for the
job.  Even then, the motherboard is only $90 mail order.

Currently we use the slip links to distribute news (nntp), mail (smtp),
xfer files (ftp), and general wide area networking learning.

If you have unanswered questions about how things work drop me a line, I'll
try to help.
-- 
Michael Galassi				| nerd@percival.rain.com
MS-DOS:  The ultimate PC virus.		| ...!tektronix!percy!nerd