Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: version B 2.10 beta 3/9/83; site cae780.UUCP
Path: utzoo!linus!decvax!harpo!seismo!hao!hplabs!hpda!fortune!amd70!cae780!chuqui
From: chuqui@cae780.UUCP (Chuq Von Rospach)
Newsgroups: net.wanted,net.lan
Subject: Re: Xerox NS or Courier for UNIX?
Message-ID: <146@cae780.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 16-Nov-83 17:01:29 EST
Article-I.D.: cae780.146
Posted: Wed Nov 16 17:01:29 1983
Date-Received: Tue, 22-Nov-83 00:35:45 EST
References: <574@cbosgd.UUCP>
Organization: CAESystems, Inc. Sunnyvale
Lines: 35


	Bridge Communications, Silicon Valley, (408) 446-2981 (not
	really for UNIX, but plug-in to various ports or multibus) I
	don't know if either are any good.  Bridge has gateways over
	ethernet and X.25 but seems to offer nothing higher level than
	transport.

When I looked rather carefully at Bridge a few months ago, they were
limited to transport layer only. They were doing development on a Vax, but
they couldn't even use their own ethernet to download software into their
boxes for testing (their ethernet boxes use 68K machines). At that time
their system looked like a good way to connect things together when you had
a number of users and a number of machines that needed to connect in
relatively random ways. It was possible to get one machine to connect to
another machine and transfer files, but that software was up to the user.
(Bridge's system, the CS/1, talked from RS232 to RS232 across an ethernet.
It did not talk to (for example) an ethernet board in a vax.

In this months (November) Mini-Micro systems, they are announcing their
CS/100, which is a single board (and cheaper) version of the CS/1. It
seems to be able to support 10 RS-232 lines, where the CS/1 supports up
to 32. They also mention optional software for file transfer for major
OS's (CP/M, MS-Dos, VMS, and Unix) that they didn't have before. This
is probably at the application level on the machine (since connection
still seems to be through RS-232), but at least its there.

I was impressed with the engineering and (from what I saw) stability of
their systems. My only quibble at that time was that it seemed like a
rather expensive way to put together a port contender system. Now with the
FTP software, it becomes much more general purpose (and with the CS/1, less
expensive).

-- 
From the dungeons of the warlock:			amd70!cae780!chuqui
		Chuqui the Plaid			*pif*