6386/SVR 3.2.1: How to get to talk to StarLAN-10?

[~XT6561110~Frank McGee~C23~L25~6326~]

In article <919 at cwjcc.CWRU.Edu> davisp at skybridge.scl.cwru.edu (Palmer Davis) writes:

>The answer I got from technical support is that I have to set some option
>of the SYSADM command to tell it about my fiber card when installing some
>package... but I didn't receive any UNIX add-on package with my NAU card and
>THERE IS NO SYSADM command in SVR 3.2 for the 386!  None of the documentation
>I received with my foundation set mentions StarLan or TCP/IP at all, except
>one brief mention of an RFS option that needs to be set when using RFS with
>StarLan... and *that* refers to a file in directory "/dev/net" that I don't
>have.  (I don't have any such directory.)

FACE is the equivalent of Sysadm on 386 Unix.  You can execute it by
running /usr/vmsys/bin/face.  Depending upon what customization you've
done to your box, /usr/vmsys/bin will be in root's path.  Of course,
you need to install FACE before you can use it.

>To reiterate my problem: I have the StarLan-10 NAU card, but *just* the bare 
>hardware (and some diagnostic disk... but I tried feeding that to installpkg 
>and it's definitely *not* a SysV add-on package...).  I need whatever device
>driver support is required for it, as well as a TCP/IP protocol suite so that
>I can communicate with our campus network (and the rest of the Internet).  If
>I understand correctly, I *should* be able to download a TCP/IP suite from a
>server on campus somewhere if I select a certain option when installing a
>certain package from a disk... but I don't have that disk, and nobody at AT&T
>will tell me how to get it!

Whoever told you that you could run TCP/IP over the fiber NAU kind of
lead you down the rosey path.  Until recently, it wasn't do-able.  Now
it is; what you want is TCP/IP Release 3.0 for 386 Unix, PEC 1274-TH1.
It will run over the Starlan 10 PC NAU (twisted pair interface), EN100
(AUI, thin ethernet interface) or the fiber NAU.  This software is a
port of the 3.01 Wollongong software from 3B2 land to 386 Unix.  It
ONLY runs over Starlan cards (ie, you can't run it over the
Micom/Racal-Interlan product, which is also known as the "6386 WGS
TCP/IP Unix Interface").

You can't download a TCP suite from a server since you won't have TCP
built into your kernel to do the downloading.  You might be able to
RFS/NFS the application binaries though (like the telnet, ftp, ping,
etc. commands).  Don't know if that would be advisable though; if you
can't get to your server you can't do anything on the network.

If you are interested in NFS, there's also a new version of NFS for
the 3.0 version of 386 Unix TCP/IP, but I don't think that's available
yet, and I don't have any information on it.

The price for 3.0 TCP for the Starlan cards is $495, U.S. list price.

Hope this helps,

-- 
Frank McGee, AT&T
Tier 3 Complementary Channel Sales Support
attmail!fmcgee