Date: Thu, 1 Feb 1996 08:17:20 -0500 (EST) From: Bill/Carolyn Pechter <pechter@shell.monmouth.com> To: jkh@time.cdrom.com (Jordan K. Hubbard) Cc: FreeBSD-hackers@freebsd.org (FreeBSD-hackers) Subject: Re: Watchdog timers (was: Re: Multi-Port Async Cards) Message-ID: <199602011317.IAA19299@shell.monmouth.com> In-Reply-To: <2257.823145561@time.cdrom.com> from "Jordan K. Hubbard" at Jan 31, 96 07:32:41 pm
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> > If you're going to go to all that trouble, why not simply add a > low-cost CPU and a serial port to it? Then you could also hook an > external modem to it and use it as a full-blown dial-in diagnostic > port for stopping the system in its tracks and sniffing around (or > poking at the corpse). I'd imagine the costs of laying out and > fabricating the boards would add such a "knee" in the cost curve that > another $100 in parts for several orders of magnitude's worth of extra > potential functionality would be a more than reasonable trade off. > > Pyramid did/does something like this for their RISC monsters. They > have a 68K machine driving a color console which provides the fanciest > interface for grubbing around in the internals of a machine/UNIX OS > that I've ever seen! The only drawback to theirs was that they didn't > really document how to get down and dirty with the 68K system (for > obvious reasons, I guess) so you couldn't really use it as an OS > developers tool, but I rather doubt that any FreeBSD related project > would make the same mistake. :-) > I don't think they did this after they went to the MIS series and later the MIPS chip. They went command line interface (partly to satisfy AT&T who OEM'd the boxes and didn't want to have to use Wyse350/Wyse30/Wyse50 crt's -- they used their own.) The interface was pretty -- but the low level grubbing was nowhere as slick as the PDP11/21 chip in the Vax8600. I've used both and the 8600 did continuous online health checks from the front end. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Bill Pechter/Carolyn Pechter | The postmaster always pings twice. Lakewood MicroSystems | 17 Meredith Drive, 908-389-3592 | Tinton Falls, NJ 07724 pechter@shell.monmouth.com |
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