IBM 8275-322 arrives!!!

All,

I am in the process of re-wiring the network in my half of the office at
work. Yes, I am switching my network for the 9595 and 8595 systems over
to FDDI.

I purchased an IBM 8275-322 last weekend off eBay. The -322 comes with
(12) 10/100 TX and (8) 100 FX ports, with the FX ports being of the SC
variety.

If anyone else buys one off eBay, be sure to ask the seller if the admin
password is known, or if it was never set, in which case it will be
blank. This is concern, because if it is unknown, you will never get
into the system without paying IBM big bucks to replace the system
module. Someone from IBM's networking support forum send me an emailing
sying it was US $499. Much more than I paid for the -322.

The 8275-318, -322 and -326 are all similar. I now have both a -322 and
a -318. The -318 is (16) 100 FX ports and the -326 is (24) 10/100 TX
ports.

These units are awesome! Very nicely crafted and beautiful to behold.
They support RS-232 console management, and also web based management
once the IP address of the switch has been set. The web based
management is also awesome. You can see a picture here:

http://home.woh.rr.com/bicyclenuts/area51/misc/8275_322.jpg

If you look in the upper right hand corner of the JPG above (careful
204KB in size), you will see a rendition of the -322 switch. What I find
very interesting is that you will see two green lights on TX port 7
(counting from the left). That was the true state of the switch when I
grabbed the picture. If you plug other cables in and click the refresh
button, the LEDs in the picture change to match the LEDs on the switch!
That is the attention to quality I expect from IBM products of this time
period!

All in all, I am very happy with the -322. If we ever decide to switch
the Linux cluster over to FDDI at work, I will need to bring my -318 in
and uplink to the -322. Slowly but surely, I am infesting my office with
IBM...

Thanks to everying in csiph for the help over the years. I need to run
home over lunch and grab some FDDI adapters and some cables now.

exwisdem
.