Minimal H/W configuration??? (Terminal Server?)

[James O'Connor]

> yap at me.utoronto.ca (Davin Yap) writes:
> 
> >I was just wondering how practical it would be to use a bare-bones 386
> >box running xenix as a terminal server.  I'd appreciate answers to any of
> >the following questions or any suggestions in general.  As a barometer
> >the cost of a 16 port terminal server here in Toronto is about $13,000 CDN
> >(or $10,800 US).  For those of you who don't know what a terminal server
> >is, it's just a box you attach to your ethernet, with lots of serial
> >ports you can attach terminals to, and login to other machines.

To update the issue about terminal server cost:

I just received some literature from Xylogics which lists their Annex II
terminal server at $5495 for 16 ports, $8495 for 32 ports.

Each port supports 16 simultaneous (but separate) network connections.
There is a parallel printer port, and the network management software is
run from one of the host machines, even a PC running Xenix (first time I've
seen that!).

It would be hard to beat the 16 port version of this with a 386 running
Xenix (unless you start using the Xenix box for other things), but you could
probably do a 32 port Xenix box for less.

There were several of these Annex boxes scattered around Usenix, and they
seemed to be very nice machines.

Sorry about goin on so long about terminal servers in c.u.x, but someone
else started the comparison. :-)
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