Re: Communications Project

[Patrick Townsend <townsend@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

That sound is toad sizzling on the BBQ...

It took a little longer than five days, but we are up and running now.
Here's the play-by-play for anyone who's interested:

TUE 6-15: We got the go ahead from Nina to ship her customer
          the software and hardware today. She is going to be on
          site on Thursday and will get it installed. The
          PC technician there wants to load the IP address on
          the serial interface unit, so we give him 
          instructions on how to do it. We would normally do
          this before we ship the unit, but he doesn't have
          an IP address for it and wants to do it himself.
          It's easy - I'm not expecting any delays because
          of this. The bets around here are split evenly on
          my having to eat toad. But I'm confident, what could
          go wrong?

THU 6-17: The customer gets the software, it gets installed on
          the AS/400, the hardware gets an IP address, we can
          ping it from the AS/400. The serial unit gets 
          connected to the DSU/CSU and the link is up to 
          GM. By the end of the day things are looking 
          goooood. I smell victory. I'm starting to gloat.
          I am not going to have to eat toad. Tomorrow I'm
          expecting to capture GM Sequencing transactions
          and wrap it up. 

FRI 6-18: Argh... We are getting data from GM but it is
          garbage. Just strings of binary data. I fiddle
          with the configuration on the AS/400 thinking
          the set up isn't right. Calls to the customer
          to verify the serial connection parameters. 
          The PC technician hooks up a PC and sees garbarge,
          too! Now I'm sure there is a set up issue on the
          GM side. More calls to GM. They've got their side
          set up for EBCDIC data. That's a new one! Weird,
          but we should be able to handle it. I make changes
          in our configuration and now we are starting 
          to get some meaningful data, but it is chopped
          up. We aren't getting complete transactions. Will
          try again on Monday.

MON 6-21: Fresh, ready to go at this again. We continue
          to receive partial records. We re-check the
          serial parameters with GM again. They insist
          8N1, 19200, Xon/Xoff. More fiddling, calls
          to our hardware supplier. No answers. Those
          who bet I would eat toad are smiling again.
          At the end of the day we decide to ask GM to
          use ASCII data instead of EBCDIC. My thought
          is that they might be sending control codes
          in the data stream that cause problems. We'll
          go at this again on Tuesday.

TUE 6-22: GM switches to ASCII data. We change our 
          configuration on the AS/400 to match. Restart
          the environment. We are getting data, but it
          is still garbage. But it is interesting garbage
          this time. Hex shows strings like B0B3B6. Hmmm,
          this looks like ASCII numbers with even parity.
          Or 7-bit data with a stop bit. Very curious.
          If you turn the high bit off of the charcters you
          get 303336. Real numbers! Hope is rekindled. Now I
          am convinced that the connection is not what
          we thought. More calls to GM.

WED 6-23: Lost day for us. We get involved in a rescue
          for another customer. But GM reports that the
          serial parameters are not what they told us! 
          This is good news! GM changes the interface and
          we start getting complete transactions in our
          log. But Nina reports that the data is not going
          to our inbound data queue. This should be easy
          to figure out. The rescue is successful, but
          we lose a day.

THU 6-24: Yes, our C program is not writing the data to
          the queue correctly. The problem is only in our
          one-way receive module. Easy fix. Migrate the 
          code and Voila! Complete sequencing transactions
          arrive in the file. Success! Great sigh of relief
          at the customer site as they have to pass a
          test with GM on Saturday. Nina's breathing again,
          too.

If you start counting on Thursday when the software arrived and got
installed, it took 6 days to get everything working. One more than the 5
days I bet. But things are looking good and the customer is happy. We
all realize that we would have been up and running on Friday if the link
had been defined correctly. And it's been great working with Nina. Her
customer is lucky to have her on their team!

What kind of sauce do you put on toad....?

Patrick
-- 
IBM AS/400 communications, FTP automation, and network security
software and consulting services.

http://www.patownsend.com

Jeffrey Silberberg wrote:
> 
>     Well, is it done or roast T........
> 
>         JMS...
> 
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