Vintage (yes really) Cisco router/TS
For the folks who know what this is ... I have a Cisco AGS 9.1 or 10.x IOS (technically a terminal server, that can route) that support the normal terminal services such as telnet and LAT. If you are interested please contact me. I'm not using it and this might be useful for a display or the museum. -- Linux Home Automation Neil Cherry ncherry@linuxha.com http://www.linuxha.com/ Main site http://linuxha.blogspot.com/ My HA Blog Author of: Linux Smart Homes For Dummies
The museum should get this.. On Thu, Jun 30, 2016 at 3:07 PM, Neil Cherry via vcf-midatlantic <vcf-midatlantic@lists.vintagecomputerfederation.org> wrote:
For the folks who know what this is ... I have a Cisco AGS 9.1 or 10.x IOS (technically a terminal server, that can route) that support the normal terminal services such as telnet and LAT. If you are interested please contact me. I'm not using it and this might be useful for a display or the museum.
-- Linux Home Automation Neil Cherry ncherry@linuxha.com http://www.linuxha.com/ Main site http://linuxha.blogspot.com/ My HA Blog Author of: Linux Smart Homes For Dummies
It's already been offered to Dave (I kind of expected he'd want it). And he know what it is. It does have an interesting problem, when running it sounds like a leaf blower (and it can move all the paper work off your desk). This was the way it was designed. It was meant for DC rack space when it was designed. -- Linux Home Automation Neil Cherry ncherry@linuxha.com http://www.linuxha.com/ Main site http://linuxha.blogspot.com/ My HA Blog Author of: Linux Smart Homes For Dummies
With the right transceivers, you can route the museum's new etherhose through it. :) I had seen one doing exactly that as "recent" as 1999 at a university. And I'm pretty sure that leaf-blower-mode is indeed Working As Designed. On Thu, 30 Jun 2016, Neil Cherry via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
It's already been offered to Dave (I kind of expected he'd want it). And he know what it is.
It does have an interesting problem, when running it sounds like a leaf blower (and it can move all the paper work off your desk). This was the way it was designed. It was meant for DC rack space when it was designed.
-- Jameel Akari
On 06/30/2016 03:49 PM, Neil Cherry via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
It's already been offered to Dave (I kind of expected he'd want it). And he know what it is.
And thank you for that. :) I deployed a large number of these way back when (the full router version, which isn't much different from the /TS), they're really amazing machines in many ways. One of the founders of Cisco lives up the road from me. I'm sure he'll want to be in on setting that up.
It does have an interesting problem, when running it sounds like a leaf blower (and it can move all the paper work off your desk). This was the way it was designed. It was meant for DC rack space when it was designed.
Yes, the blower in the AGS is somewhat legendary! -Dave -- Dave McGuire, AK4HZ New Kensington, PA
I worked with some later Cisco IOS stuff back in college, and was wondering if there's any chance you could dump the firmware from this beast. Given what OS it runs internally, it sounds like something which needs preservation. On 6/30/2016 4:12 PM, Dave McGuire via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
On 06/30/2016 03:49 PM, Neil Cherry via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
It's already been offered to Dave (I kind of expected he'd want it). And he know what it is. And thank you for that. :) I deployed a large number of these way back when (the full router version, which isn't much different from the /TS), they're really amazing machines in many ways.
One of the founders of Cisco lives up the road from me. I'm sure he'll want to be in on setting that up.
It does have an interesting problem, when running it sounds like a leaf blower (and it can move all the paper work off your desk). This was the way it was designed. It was meant for DC rack space when it was designed. Yes, the blower in the AGS is somewhat legendary!
-Dave
-- Jonathan Gevaryahu jgevaryahu@gmail.com jgevaryahu@hotmail.com
On 06/30/2016 05:03 PM, Jonathan Gevaryahu via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
I worked with some later Cisco IOS stuff back in college, and was wondering if there's any chance you could dump the firmware from this beast. Given what OS it runs internally, it sounds like something which needs preservation.
That's probably a good idea. Though I'm not sure about the legality. I also probably have a ton of the EPROMs for the csc/2, 3 & 4 from when I did the field upgrades. -- Linux Home Automation Neil Cherry ncherry@linuxha.com http://www.linuxha.com/ Main site http://linuxha.blogspot.com/ My HA Blog Author of: Linux Smart Homes For Dummies
On 06/30/2016 04:56 PM, Neil Cherry via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
On 06/30/2016 05:03 PM, Jonathan Gevaryahu via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
I worked with some later Cisco IOS stuff back in college, and was wondering if there's any chance you could dump the firmware from this beast. Given what OS it runs internally, it sounds like something which needs preservation.
That's probably a good idea. Though I'm not sure about the legality. I also probably have a ton of the EPROMs for the csc/2, 3 & 4 from when I did the field upgrades.
I have AGS and AGS+ firmware loads. There were flash upgrade boards for the xGS family; one doesn't need to dump the EPROMs to get most releases. They are around. -Dave -- Dave McGuire, AK4HZ New Kensington, PA
On 6/30/2016 4:56 PM, Neil Cherry wrote:
On 06/30/2016 05:03 PM, Jonathan Gevaryahu via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
I worked with some later Cisco IOS stuff back in college, and was wondering if there's any chance you could dump the firmware from this beast. Given what OS it runs internally, it sounds like something which needs preservation.
That's probably a good idea. Though I'm not sure about the legality. I also probably have a ton of the EPROMs for the csc/2, 3 & 4 from when I did the field upgrades.
I'm personally less worried about legality and more about various firmware versions completely vanishing. The internet archive (and to some extent bitsavers) acts as a library, so they have less of a problem from a legal standpoint. -- Jonathan Gevaryahu jgevaryahu@gmail.com jgevaryahu@hotmail.com
On 06/30/2016 04:12 PM, Dave McGuire via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
On 06/30/2016 03:49 PM, Neil Cherry via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
It's already been offered to Dave (I kind of expected he'd want it). And he know what it is.
And thank you for that. :) I deployed a large number of these way back when (the full router version, which isn't much different from the /TS), they're really amazing machines in many ways.
Like I said, right person. :-)
One of the founders of Cisco lives up the road from me. I'm sure he'll want to be in on setting that up.
I wonder if he knows the trick to flip the bit to allow the device to be both a router and a TS. There was some trick to it and unfortunately the person I know who knew it has passed away. :(
It does have an interesting problem, when running it sounds like a leaf blower (and it can move all the paper work off your desk). This was the way it was designed. It was meant for DC rack space when it was designed.
Yes, the blower in the AGS is somewhat legendary!
I had one of these on my desk in our Hadley Rd support center (I did network support for AT&T). I could get everything to work properly but OSI (DECNet PhV). That alway seems to break MS SMB stuff. I had one customer who had IBM hardware, DEC, Vines, XNS, PUP, IP and Novel 2.0. It was actually pretty cool to see him login to the mainframe and then proceed to run processes with pipes and redirection across multiple machine (IBM, DEC and Unix). He was mostly a mainframe person but totally understood the 'Unix way'. His environment was extremely well integrate to the terminal. This was before SSH. Sorry about the trip down memory lane, those were some fun times. -- Linux Home Automation Neil Cherry ncherry@linuxha.com http://www.linuxha.com/ Main site http://linuxha.blogspot.com/ My HA Blog Author of: Linux Smart Homes For Dummies
Neat! I don't have a specific need for them, but there's a lot of interesting history behind this product. A direct descendant from the Stanford Blue Box, which of course also spawned Sun Microsystems. IIRC it's a Multibus box with very early Stanford-designed or 3Com Ethernet boards. Thanks, Jonathan
On 06/30/2016 04:06 PM, Systems Glitch via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
Neat! I don't have a specific need for them, but there's a lot of interesting history behind this product. A direct descendant from the Stanford Blue Box, which of course also spawned Sun Microsystems. IIRC it's a Multibus box with very early Stanford-designed or 3Com Ethernet boards.
Cool, I knew some of this. I'd been trained with IOS 7.2 on the xGS line (and the AT&T Brouter, sounds like someone had gas ;-) ). I almost got my hands on one of the early Cisco routers but couldn't afford it (early days of ebay). The CGS, MGS, the MGS+, AGS, & AGS+ were all multibus. The AGS+ had an additional bus (or was that the multibus?). The board order was important, 1st board in the upper bus had the highest priority. The xGS line was related to the original but it started to use the custom chips (not quite FPGAs). I think the original was a csc then the csc/2 (68020), the csc/3 ('030) and I think the csc/4 ('040) the processor in this was the csc/4 or 4. -- Linux Home Automation Neil Cherry ncherry@linuxha.com http://www.linuxha.com/ Main site http://linuxha.blogspot.com/ My HA Blog Author of: Linux Smart Homes For Dummies
On 06/30/2016 04:49 PM, Neil Cherry via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
Neat! I don't have a specific need for them, but there's a lot of interesting history behind this product. A direct descendant from the Stanford Blue Box, which of course also spawned Sun Microsystems. IIRC it's a Multibus box with very early Stanford-designed or 3Com Ethernet boards.
Cool, I knew some of this. I'd been trained with IOS 7.2 on the xGS line (and the AT&T Brouter, sounds like someone had gas ;-) ).
*BRRRAP!*
I almost got my hands on one of the early Cisco routers but couldn't afford it (early days of ebay).
The CGS, MGS, the MGS+, AGS, & AGS+ were all multibus. The AGS+ had an additional bus (or was that the multibus?). The board order was important, 1st board in the upper bus had the highest priority.
The extra bus in the AGS+ is called the Cbus. A long time ago I read that it's actually an implementation of NuBus. There's a board that bridges between the Multibus P1 connector and the Cbus, the Cbus controller. The Cbus uses a DIN 41612 connector, not a card-edge like standard Multibus P2-side connectors, but it's in the same physical place on the board as the Multibus P2 card-edge. Turning an AGS into an AGS+ involves adding the bolt-on Cbus backplane and a Cbus controller. Possibly one other thing (firmware?) but I don't recall.
The xGS line was related to the original but it started to use the custom chips (not quite FPGAs). I think the original was a csc then the csc/2 (68020), the csc/3 ('030) and I think the csc/4 ('040) the processor in this was the csc/4 or 4.
It's awesome to read about someone else who has been inside these machines. :) I have a couple of CSC/4 boards here, and a Cbus controller or two. -Dave -- Dave McGuire, AK4HZ New Kensington, PA
participants (6)
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Christian Liendo -
Dave McGuire -
Jameel Akari -
Jonathan Gevaryahu -
Neil Cherry -
Systems Glitch