A: eVX was an acronym for "eta.infinity / VorteX", the names of the 2 systems involved in the eVX SL/IP Alliance.
A: The eVX SL/IP alliance was the name given to a SL/IP (Serial Line / Internet Protocol) connection that linked 2 computers in Appleton, WI over the phone line. The Alliance also entailed an attempt to set up, learn, and configure all the 'major' networking utilites for UNIX, in the preparation that eta.infinity would be connected to the Internet at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, which it did.
A: Matthew R. Peterson (aka Avrex), System Administrator of eta.infinity and Jonathan W. Day (aka Lucipher), System Administrator of VorteX.
A:
eta.infinity
Hardware: Gateway 486DX/33Vesa System
8 Megs of Memory
460 Megs of Storage from 2 Hard Drives (250,210)
ATI Graphics Pro Card
Mitsumi LU-005 CD-ROM (Junk)
3.5 / 5.25" Floppy Drives
Gateway Keyboard, Microsoft Mouse
15" Crystalscan 1572 FS Monitor
Dumb Terminal
14.4k Zoom Internal FaxModem
A Dedicated Telephone Line (414)-731-1314
Software: BSDI BSD/386 v1.1 UNIX along with the
M.I.T. X Window System (X11R5)
VorteX
Hardware: Macintosh IIvx
14" Monitor
12 Megs of Memory
120 Meg Hard Drive
Zoom 14.4k External FaxModem
A Dedicated Telephone Line (414)-731-3383
Macintosh Keyboard & Mouse
SCSI CD-ROM Drive
Espirit (ESP 6310) Dumb Terminal
Software: Macintosh System 7.1 and
MachTen UNIX v2.1 (BSD4.3) from Tenon Systems
A: Aproximently from May, 1994 to July, 1994, when we both moved from Appleton, WI to Madison, WI to start college.
A: Yeah, whatever!
Lucipher had an account on America OnLine (AOL) which he used fairly often, so he would take down the SL/IP connection without warning to dial up AOL. I would only find out later that I had to re-establish the connection by having him call me, or if I tried to telnet to his system and nothing happened.
A: We pretty much didn't bother with too many scripts, especially the ones provided with BSDI, so the following is the process Avrex went through each time to connect:
eta% call [Which was the following script: #!/bin/sh stty 57600 tip -57600 tty00 ] atdt7313383 CONNECT 57600 4.3 BSD (VorteX.eVX) (tty00) login: etaslip Password: [bunch of misc stuff from /etc/motd woudl appear] Starting SL/IP Script [then I would suspend the telnet session and kill it] eta% slipon [Which was the following script: #!/bin/sh stty -f /dev/tty00 cts_oflow rts_iflow slattach /dev/tty00 57600 ifconfig sl0 89.0.0.2 89.0.0.1 link2 up echo "eVX SL/IP Integrity Established" echo "89.0.0.2 (eta.infinity.eVX) <----> 89.0.0.1 (VorteX.eVX)" ] eta% ping VorteX.eVX [Just to make sure the system was connected]And that was it... fun. Not.
A: BSDI BSD/386 is not a pretty Operating System at times... enough said.
A: I'm trying to remember the longest I saw on 'uptime', but I think it was around 17 days. Of course our systems were on 24 hours a day from May to July.
A: The BSDI Sendmail didn't seem to like anyone, it worked for a while, but then just died. Though when eta.infinity was attached to the Internet via Ethernet, Sendmail worked perfectly, and still does.
NFS (Network File System) didn't seem to work well with MachTen and the Macintosh file system, especially when trying to view a .GIF through XV on the Macs Hard Drive, at 9600 baud. It crashed the Macintosh. Needless to say, NFS / nfsd was disabled.
nn (news), we never did get it compiled, it wasn't SL/IPs fault though. Doesn't matter, now eta.infinity has "tin".
A: I think The SL/IP Storybook will answer that question...
A: It was written in response to the "SL/IP Cookbook" article that appeared in AXCESS Magazine, and submitted to them in an attempt to show them that SL/IP can be hell. There was never an acknoledgement that the story was recieved, and was never published.
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