UNIX PC STARLAN ioctl() calls, URP protocol, streams, questions...

[Lenny Tropiano]

While a lot of you are getting in a frenzy with the WIN/3B TCP/IP Ethernet
stuff, I felt it was necessary to pose a few questions to the net on STARLAN.
STARLAN boards for those who are interested should still be available from
Robert Slaski, and I recommend them very much.  Granted not too many machines
(especially non-AT&T ones) run STARLAN, and worst yet, the 1Mbps STARLAN, as
opposed to the 10Mbps (aka STARLAN-10).

Documentation on STARLAN is the pits, even the programmers manual only goes
into the high-level library calls found in the libslan.a library.  While
perusing the /usr/include/net and /usr/include/net/sys directories on my
system I started to get some ideas about doing "low-level" STARLAN operations,
and possibly learn a little more about this network media I have on my
two UNIX pc's.

The STARLAN driver on the UNIX pc has a special implementation of streams.
What modules can be pushed (I_PUSH) on to the /dev/starlan stream?  
The URP protocol (what it uses to communicate between machines, similar to
what Ethernet can use, TCP/IP) is a stream module.  Does anyone have 
documentation on how to use the low-level driver ioctl()'s as well as
the stream driver.  Doing a "strings" of my uucico (HDB) reveals some
interesting items...

These stream modules -- what do they do?  How do I use them?

slancall: push(ccmod) errno %d  		
slancall: push(urpmod) errno %d
slancall: push(psxmod) errno %d

In /usr/include/net/starlan.h, there are some interesting #defines ...


#define LIS_PROMISC	0x0001		/* Promiscuous listening */

(One could write some sort of thing to listen on the network and catch
 all the network packets in promiscous mode?)

#define ENC_MANCH	0x0004		/* Manchester encoding */
#define ENC_NRZ		0x0000		/* NRZ encoding */

(Encoding methods?  Excuse my network naivety)

/*
 * Ioctl commands (Unix)
 */

[...]
#define CS_DUMP		(CIOC|6)	/* Dump CSMA parameters */
#define CS_RST_CNTRS	(CIOC|7)	/* reset statistics counters */

These are used to get the STARLAN parameters for programs like
/usr/net/bin/remstat and /usr/net/bin/slnstat

STARLAN 1.1 NAU Statistics since Mon May 28 20:52:48 1990

 Prom:		08 00 6A 02 7C 99 00 6B 63 6F 52 54 11 21 EF DF
 System name:       icus
 Physical address:  08 00 6A 02 7C 99
 Chip lockups:             0   Resource errors:            0
 CRC errors:               0   DMA overruns:               0
 Alignment errors:         0   DMA underruns:              0
 Frames too short:         0   Pending sessions:           5
 Loss of CTS:              0   Frames received:        11998
 Loss of carrier:          0   Frames discarded:           0
 Deferrals:              122   Total writes:           11983
 Collisions:             141   Frames transmitted:     11975
 Collision aborts:         8   Writes lost:                0
                               Illegal packets:            0

Duration: 8 days  3 hours  44 minutes  16 seconds

#define CS_DIAGNOSE	(CIOC|12)	/* Issue a diag. command */

Diagnostic commands?  What commands?

#define CS_READPROM	(CIOC|21)	/* Read the on-board PROM */

To get that "Prom:" information ... (the network address of the board, etc.)

#define CS_MAINT_MODE	(CIOC|25)	/* Enter maintanence mode */

Maintanence mode?  

/*
 * Definitions pertaining to URP
 */

#define CS_XPARENT	(CIOC|40)	/* Set transparent mode */
#define CS_OPAQUE	(CIOC|41)	/* Set "opaque" mode */
[...]
Explain the difference between transparent mode and opaque mode?   And
why uucico does this? (again from string table...)

slancall: net_ioctl(CS_OPAQUE) errno %d

[...]
#define N_ISN_OPTS	(CIOC|83)	/* Please don't ask!! */

Ok, I'll bite ... What the heck is this? :-)

[...]
 * See Intel 82586 documentation / errata sheets for more details

That's the LAN chip they use?  Is this the same chip as in STARLAN boards
of the IBM PC's?

/*
 * Length of the useful data in the PROM
 */

#define SL_PROM_SIZE	16
[...]
 Prom:		08 00 6A 02 7C 99 00 6B 63 6F 52 54 11 21 EF DF

Geez, I do count 16!   And the first 6 are the physical address.

Anything about STARLAN that would be interesting to know would be appreciated!
Thanks.

-Lenny
-- 
| Lenny Tropiano           ICUS Software Systems        lenny at icus.ICUS.COM |
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