Re: Running out of twinax consoles...

[Simon Coulter <shc@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On 05/06/2008, at 3:57 AM, rob@xxxxxxxxx wrote:

> You obviously didn't go through the plethora of broken switches on  
> 3196's
> that I did.

Heavy-handedness?

> Or the twinax going out on your box - Just port 0, rest worked fine  
> (no,
> it was not wiring or anything.)

How is that different from a network card or a card slot giving up  
the ghost? At least you still had the remaining ports available so  
most users were able to access the system.

> Or that QAUTOCRT is a joke.  Test that by renaming CRTDEVDSP,  
> swapping out
> the system console from one model to another (like, from a 3180 to  
> a 3197,
> because yet another system console died) and finding out that you  
> have no
> system console.

That's hardly the fault of QAUTCRT. It does what it says-- 
automatically creates devices. It's hardly the system's fault you did  
a stupid thing. OK, they could have called the underlying CPP (or a  
more direct program) but using the command makes things so much easier.

> Now you can get into the myriad of problems caused by faulty twinax  
> cable
> ends,

Not on manufactured cables--only on in-house or home-made cables. Or  
again, heavy-handedness when lining up and joining the pins.

> balun wiring,

That whole concept was flawed--driven solely by cheapness. Powered  
hubs were usually fine but using un-powered led to a heap of  
problems. Besides using Baluns is not really twin-ax. You have Twin- 
ax at the start (host end) and Twin-ax at the end (terminal) but  
what's in between sure ain't Twin-ax.

> maxxed out number of splices,

Yes, so buy new cable and use long runs instead of stringing together  
a bunch of short cables and hoping the signal gets through.

> etc dealing with twinax wiring.

Most of your described problems are not directly related to Twin-ax  
itself but rather to a particularly poor site implementation of it.

Regards,
Simon Coulter.
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