Comments for Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat » Stephen Foskett, Pack Rat

Comment on Teaching Science with Wi-Fi (Thanks, Ruckus and MetaGeek!) by Freddie Cash

Freddie Cash — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 19:06:00 +0000

Nope, had not heard of that. Looks very nice. Will have to download that and give it a try the next time I’m mapping out signal strength in a building.

Thanks for the link.

Comment on Reminiscing About the Cubix ERS, My First Bladed Server System by Etherealmind

Etherealmind — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 16:44:00 +0000

I also remember deploying Cubix servers for a “remote desktop” application using PC Anywhere in the early nineties. A 9600 baud phone was miraculous for mining companies at that time.

Comment on Reminiscing About the Cubix ERS, My First Bladed Server System by sfoskett

sfoskett — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 15:56:00 +0000

Best comment ever, Howard! You are old but great!

Comment on Reminiscing About the Cubix ERS, My First Bladed Server System by DeepStorage

DeepStorage — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 15:52:00 +0000

Cubix and the proto-blade had been around a while by the time you saw them my young friend. Back in the early ’80s Industrial Micro Systems, Cubix’s original name, and several other vendors were selling Z-80 based systems using proto-blades on the S-100 bus.

One processor, the master, controlled access to shared I/O resources, primarily disk drives both floppy and hard, while up to 16 slave cards with processor, memory and serial ports ran applications. Generally each slave acted as a single user’s PC and the users had dumb, or VT-100 not so dumb, terminals on their desks.

The whole thing was managed with either Digital Research’s CP-Net or a better CP/M compatible OS TurboDOS. The master acted as a disk server, like 3Com’s 3Share before they switched to LANmanager, so shared access to data required applications to be written to the system there being no file or record locking semantics.

As the PC took over Cubix and J&L (which became Chatcom) moved to x86 DOS architectures and sold most of their systems for remote access as each “blade” could run a modem for PC Anywhere type connections.

Curious facts:

1 – My brother wrote, and my company at the time Pro-Comp Systems published, the definitive (ok only) book on TurboDOS, TurboDOS made Easy.

2 – Novell Data Systems sold CP-Net based systems using RS-422 to link the master to the slaves before Ray Noorda came around and hired SuperSet to create NetWare.

3 – I’m really old cause I remember all this.

Comment on Where Did Blade Servers Come From? by Where Did Blade Servers Come From? – Making blade servers simple

Where Did Blade Servers Come From? – Making blade servers simple — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 15:32:07 +0000

[...] you like technology and are a history buff, I recommend you check out Stephen’s article at http://blog.fosketts.net/2012/02/20/blade-server-history/. Share [...]

Comment on Why You Should Never Again Utter The Word, “CIFS” by Why You Should Never Again Utter The Word, “CIFS” « Storage CH Blog

Why You Should Never Again Utter The Word, “CIFS” « Storage CH Blog — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 08:23:50 +0000

[...] on here Rate this: Share this:TwitterEmailLinkedInPrintDiggFacebook Leave a Comment by rogerluethy on [...]

Comment on Storage History: The 3Server by Why You Should Never Again Utter The Word, “CIFS” « Storage CH Blog

Why You Should Never Again Utter The Word, “CIFS” « Storage CH Blog — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 08:22:17 +0000

[...] took this protocol, known as “server message block” (SMB), and merged it with LAN Manager, which had been codeveloped with 3Com, and released it as the preferred network storage mechanism in Windows for [...]

Comment on Why You Should Never Again Utter The Word, “CIFS” by Roger Luethy

Roger Luethy — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 08:22:00 +0000

Just great ! Thanks !

Comment on Why You Should Never Again Utter The Word, “CIFS” by Nick Howell

Nick Howell — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 06:16:00 +0000

I’m a NetApp’er, and I approve this message.

(did that sound political enough?)

Comment on What Is a Blade Server? by sfoskett

sfoskett — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 21:31:00 +0000

I do not consider @Nutanix to be a blade server. It’s a different animal entirely! I’m actually working on the Hyperscale Server article in this series right now!