Some people asked me to summarise any information I obtained

in response to my query as to wheter it is possible to run X.25

on a Sun SLC using the serial connector on the reverse? This is what

I and a colleague here have found out.

The answer appears to be *yes* it is possible. Exactly how depends

on who you talk to.

We finally got a reply from Sun UK who said that it is possible but that

you need a special little gadget that plugs into the back of the SLC

serial port. This is required since the serial port is actually a

combination of *two* serial ports. The "gadget" splits the port into a

standard synchronous RS232 port, capable of running X.25 plus a minimal

RS232, presumably for running a printer etc.

However, a user in Germany is currently using an SLC for X.25 without

any extra equipment. He says the special cable is only necessary if you

want to use the second serial port (/dev/ttyb). (The second port

for asynchronous communication only). The pinout of the connector

for the first port is standard V.24 with pins 2,3,4,5,6,7,8,15,17,20 & 24.

The second port uses the secondary data pins on the V.24 connector,

namely 12,13,14,16,19 and of course 7 for ground. You can find

the pinout in Appendix C of the SPARCstation SLC Installation & Repair Guide.

Thanks to Wolfgang Solfrank for the above information.

The IPC will *NOT* support X.25 at all. All Sparc stations *do*

support X.25.

Hope the information is useful.

Neil

--
Neil Calton UUCP: ..!mcsun!ukc!rlinf!nbc
Informatics Department, NSFNET:nbc%inf.rl.ac.uk@nsfnet-relay.ac.uk
Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, BITNET: nbc%inf.rl.ac.uk@ukacrl
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