[rescue] u2 drive trays

[Skeezics Boondoggle]

On Mon, 18 Aug 2003, Phil Stracchino wrote:
> 
> I'm unfamiliar with the Fore SBA-200.  what is it, and what would I do
> with such a thing if I had one?

It's an Sbus 155Mbit ATM interface.  The SBA-200E is the slightly better
model (does more of the cell processing in hardware?).  I've got a couple
of those at home (two Sbus, and a pair of 'em in some HP700's) and a
couple of old ForeRunner switches.  18 OC-3 ports, baby!

The ForeRunners are interesting... basically an OEM Sun VME SBC, *with* a
hard drive, that boots SunOS4 and downloads microcode into the Fore ATM
switch at boot time, then acts as the management interface for the thing.  
Sadly, I have one with a bad disk - the only partition that's trashed is
the Fore-specific /atm directory (IIRC, it's been a while).  I did manage
to get the network up once using the painful low-level PVC/SVC stuff
(damn, ATM is nasty :-) because the LANE code wasn't available in the
version of the software I have.  Naturally, saving the configuration
failed and I lost it all next time the switch rebooted.  So my SBA-200's
are currently in antistat bags.

It's fun to play with, just to say "I've got thick, thin, and TP Ethernet,
ATM, DSL, and HomePNA networking in my house."  Adding an old Apollo token
ring :-) and/or a FDDI ring would be fun, but I don't have much
time/energy/pressing need for it...

-- Chris