Ready to "Wring Out the Old"...

 2017 was wrapped up with a weeks-long 12+ hour days effort to move a data center "live" (that is, keep as much online as possible, while shifting it all to another building!), in an effort that ended 2 days before Christmas, because the building we had been in was going to be demolished! We got it done, but that was just the start of maintaining that operation while the campus around us was demolished, and significant renovations were being made to the building that we were now in. Going to the data center included suiting up in boots, jeans, hardhat, safety vest and safety glasses. Construction continues even today, on 5 of the 6 sides of the current data center. COVID-19  certainly played a part in extending the length of the construction project, and the end is now foreseeable.

  In January of 2021, I expect to see President Joe Biden sworn in as the 46th President of the US. We may even see the first inoculations for COVID-19 start in the US. In the Spring of 2021, I expect to be relocating to SW Oregon, and selling my California home. We've all been adapting to "working from home", as companies have had to change and adapt to remote working. With that move comes the decisions of what to pack, and where will it live in the new house. Older console servers from the test lab? Manuals and CDs from past vendors (example: Cyclades), with docs and firmware for older hardware. Even bins of serial adapters and specialty cables. Some of that stuff isn't going to "make the cut". This will be much of the "Wringing Out" in the next few months...

  In the past 3 years, I've been making LED Art with Arduino boards for fun (see https://www.instructables.com/IKEA-Star-With-ATtiny-and-NeoPixels/ for an example) and environmental monitors. I also got a Prusa MK2S 3D printer, and I'm learning how to make things. I was a supporter of https://www.hackerdojo.com, but COVID-19 has closed most of our maker spaces. I helped teach embedded computing to Jr High students for a year (1-day every couple weeks, in an Introduction to Technology class). I was at every (SF) Bay Area Maker Faire until there was no more Maker Faire. 

  I was wrestling with whether to start a new Maker-oriented blog as a fork, and try to keep that up after the move. But all the good names I could think of has been taken on blogspot, many years ago. Sadly, most of them had far fewer entries... some seemed to only try a few test posts, and then they want idle. Some started back in 2001, but none updated after 2014. :-( As a result, I think I'll stick with this blog, and post what I like going forward (versus only posting console-related things). 

  I still get the occasional email, asking for something that's not on my pages at https://www.conserver.com/consoles/, but I haven't needed to set up any hardware to recreate a problem for a long while. It may be Murphy's Law that after I toss out old hardware, that's when folks will have a problem that I'd want to look at myself. But since Murphy isn't going to help me load and unload the trucks, I'll learn to live with not having the hardware.

  I'm also exploring Raspberry Pi as I explore new Digital modes in Ham Radio (DMR, New Packet, and some HF modes next year), as I decide which monitors will be useful for Pi projects. There may be some interesting serial-related posts about these in the future.

  I hope for good luck, and good health for all of us in the new year.

Ring out the old? Serial Consoles STILL going strong!

The last couple of weeks have been very busy, helping acquire a small company for a customer. The majority of my role included assessing, and then upgrading the network gear, as well as helping with the various server gear.

After the initial assessment, I installed Conserver on a local host, and I re-deployed a Cisco 3640 with a pair of NM-32A asynch modules. The serial consoles were VITAL to take over network gear for which the previous administrator could offer no admin credentials. Some of the network gear was also equipment with older operating software, which I had little experience with, so I needed to engage technical help from the equipment vendor. The first two questions were always "Can we do a remote desktop conference?" and "Do you have access to the serial console?" It's always nice to be able to answer "yes" to both questions. There is also some comfort in knowing that Conserver will be logging the session, so you can look back over the logs after the fact to review what happened.

During this session, I was also working with some Juniper gear, and I'm REALLY happy that Juniper also use the RJ45 wiring schema that Cisco uses. I'm a big fan of that symmetrical wiring format.

It's worth noting that SUN Microsystems newer machines (starting back with the Netra T-1) have also used this wiring schema for their TTYs0, and some Lantronix console servers have also used the wiring schema. Opengear has made this wiring schema an option for many of their products, and it is becoming the primary wiring format for some of their newest products. This makes hooking up the majority of the equipment that I work simple, AND it gives me some flexibility to choose different hardware vendors with confidence that they will drop into my existing infrastructure nicely.

Finally, I wanted to point out that serial port capability is also still being built into embedded processors! I've had some time to hack with the ATMEL processors used in the Arduino family of development boards. One port is normally integrated with a bootloader and connected to a USB interface (typically with an FTDI interface chip) to make it easy to talk to the processor. However, these 3.3-to-5 volt "TTL" interfaces can also be tied to an RS-232 interface chip when the ATMEL chip is plugged into an embedded system. (As an alternative, there is another pair of pins which can be a data-only 9600 bps (max) serial port to communicate between the ATMEL chip an another device. And the larger ATMEGA actually has 3 extra serial ports available!) My newest project is to make a small processor which can communicate via a serial interface to another system.

As we enter 2011, the venerable RS-232 serial interface lives on. I wish you all health and happiness, and hopefully a bit of prosperity as well.

         -Z-