Usefullness of a CX-11 controller

On 01/07/2011 21:00, Tony Duell wrote: No, the UARTs are on the main board, but IIRC the drivers are on the panels. I have one too. Before I started in my present job, UoY had quite a lot of thick yellow etherhose around the place[1], and Camtec pads stuck in odd corners with various terminals hanging off them. There weren't really any proper wiring centres in those days, not in the way we now have rooms with a couple of racks, space to walk round them, etc. A couple of years ago I got a call from the electricians. "We need to turn off the power in <somewhere> electrical plant room for testing and there's one of your network things there with flashing lights. Is it OK to turn off?" I said we had no network switches there. They described where <somewhere> was, but it made no sense; our wiring centre for that building was at the opposite side of the building, it was it's own dedicated room, and definitely not in an electrical plant room. So eventually they led me to to this plant room to look, and there was this dusty long-forgotten Camtec PAD, lights still flashing, connected to a length of yellow coax that could not possibly have been carrying packets for over ten years, patiently listening for traffic on serial lines that led to about a dozen rooms. Yes, it still works. 1][ Actually it still does, though no longer carrying traffic. It's just to too difficult to try to pull it back out again. Some of it is probably all that's holding up the covered walkways. -- Pete Peter Turnbull Network Manager University of York