Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ames!lll-winken!uunet!munnari!murtoa.cs.mu.oz.au!ditmela!smart From: smart@ditmela.oz (Robert Smart) Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip Subject: TCP/IP terminal access to GEAC computers anyone? Message-ID: <4752@ditmela.oz> Date: 12 Apr 89 10:17:37 GMT Reply-To: smart@ditmela.oz.au (Robert Smart) Organization: CSIRO, Division of Information Technology, Australia Lines: 29 GEACs are computers made in Canada and sold mainly (?) for library automation. They have an X.25 capability, but I'm not sure what protocol they speak over that to their terminal concentrator things called NIMs. They allow direct connection of async terminals so it should be easy to get into them with a terminal server, right? Wrong. They have their own funny terminals which talk some strange multidrop polling protocol to the GEAC over the async line. This lets you put up to 3 terminals on one async line. Each terminal has to have a unique Polling Code. So you can set it up: up-to-3-GEAC-terminals---terminal-server----terminal-server---GEAC I guess this will work if it is a fixed connection, but the GEAC will keep polling the terminals across the network. If you try to bring different (groups of) terminals in from different terminal servers in to the same port on the GEAC then the polling won't work because the Polling Codes will be wrong. You could set multiple terminals up with the same codes, but then they wouldn't be able to use the GEAC simultaneously (I think). Well if I had the source for the terminal servers I guess I could put in special code to fudge the polling and diddle the Polling Codes. I hope somebody out there has a better idea: or knows more about these beasts than me. I might say that we have a fair few of these GEAC terminals, so we'd like a solution that allows them. Then again they're expensive (understatement) so we would also be interested in a solution that emulates them on VT100s or similar. Bob Smart or