🚀 go-pugleaf

RetroBBS NetNews Server

Inspired by RockSolid Light RIP Retro Guy

Article View: comp.sys.dec
Article #4373

Re: What is an ESAR chip

#4373
From: Bernhard Fabricius
Date: Fri, 22 Jan 1993 04:29
35 lines
2098 bytes
In article <1993Jan21.191137.3419@athena.mit.edu>, goeke@space.mit.edu (Robert F. Goeke) writes:
>I got an upgrade kit to convert one of our 5000/200s to a 240.  In the
>instructions they tell you to remove the ESAR chip (located in a socket on the
>motherboard) from the 200 and put it into the 240.  'Course there already was an
>ESAR chip in the 240 motherboard as shipped. . . but that's another story.  The
>physical chip (a 16 pin DIP) is labled "ENET ADRS".
>
>So what is it, and why whould you change it out?

I don't claim that I KNOW the answer, but I can make a GUESS:

ENET ADRS sounds pretty much like "EtherNET ADdReSs", don't you think ?
I would guess this is a way of keeping you EtherNet hardware address. 

And why would you want to do that ? Well, several software developers use the
EtherNet HW address in a primitve licensing scheme to ensure you only run their
stuff on the one machine you bought it for. By retaining the address chip, you
can still run the software on the new machine. (You might still be breaking
the licence agreement, though, if it also is capacity based.)

Does this make sense ? Any comments ??

Cheers


Bernhard
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dr Bernhard Fabricius              |
Academic VAX/VMS Support           |  "I am a Bear of Very Little Brain,
Department of Nuclear Physics      |           and long words Bother me."
Australian National University     |
                                   |                           - A.A. Milne
InterNet: BEAR@NUC.ANU.EDU.AU      |
    POSTMASTER@NUC.ANU.EDU.AU      |
Technical Details
Message-ID: <1jnt7hINNfk9@manuel.anu.edu.au>
Path: arc1-ca.pugleaf.net!sparky!uunet!munnari.oz.au!manuel.anu.edu.au!manuel.anu.edu.au!usenet
References: <1993Jan21.191137.3419@athena.mit.edu>

Show Full Headers
Complete Article Headers
Path: arc1-ca.pugleaf.net!sparky!uunet!munnari.oz.au!manuel.anu.edu.au!manuel.anu.edu.au!usenet
From: bear@nuc.anu.edu.au (Bernhard Fabricius)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.dec
Subject: Re: What is an ESAR chip
Date: 22 Jan 1993 04:29:37 GMT
Organization: Nuclear Physics, ANU
Lines: 36
Distribution: world
Message-ID: <1jnt7hINNfk9@manuel.anu.edu.au>
References: <1993Jan21.191137.3419@athena.mit.edu>
Reply-To: BEAR@NUC.ANU.EDU.AU
NNTP-Posting-Host: 150.203.19.47