After reading all the other responses, I can suggest a few possibilities.
Â
One:Â If the equipment is subject to FCC regulation you may find the progocols buried in some government regulations.
Â
Two: If you know the SNMP that goes in and can control the results that way, figuring out the mapping between the SMNP and a serial stream should not be that hard. It sounds as if you are starting out totally blind.
Â
Three: Scrap them and start over with known equipment from cooperative vendors. That is probably cheaper too, since time is money.
Â
Robert Reavis
Warm Springs Computer Works
Fremont, California
Â
Â
----- Original Message -----
From: HYPERLINK "mailto:dbrudrow@sbcglobal.net"Doug Rudrow
To: HYPERLINK "mailto:vrf@agilent.com"VRF
Sent: Monday, September 25, 2006 1:28 AM
Subject: [vrf] A tough one...
Greetings vrf,
Â
Let me begin by thanking this forum in general and many of you personally for all of your help over the years and especially in the last few months as I’ve begun a new professional adventure. You’ve made the transition into my new position much smoother and made me look good in the process.
Â
Now I find myself begging for help once again. This one may be too much to ask for. I have a piece of equipment, well, to be honest, I’ve got 13 of them, which I need to control. The problem is: This equipment was not designed to be used as test equipment. It is meant to be used by cable providers in their head-end systems. As such, it is designed to be monitored and controlled by a network monitoring system, sold by the manufacturer at an incredibly high price. What this monitoring system does is translate SNMP into a proprietary serial protocol that communicates with these upconverters. We’ve tried to no avail to get the manufacturer to give (or even sell) us the right to use the protocol to control these upconverters for use in a test system. The big question is: is there any way to hack into these upconverters in order to discover the details of the protocol that will allow us to set the frequency and power level? We don’t have the first clue about this protocol, whether it is packet based, what the baud rate is, what the byte size is, whether there are start or stop bits or if there is per byte parity. Are we pretty much hosed or is there a glimmer of hope out there?
Â
Thanks,
Doug
Â
Â
Douglas B. Rudrow
Systems Development Lab Technologist
Aurora Networks
2803 Mission College Blvd.
Santa Clara, California, 95054
U.S.A.
(408) 235-7000 Main
(408) 235 7084 Direct
HYPERLINK "mailto:rvilla@aurora.com"drudrow@aurora.com
dbrudrow@sbcglobal.net
Â
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Â
One:Â If the equipment is subject to FCC regulation you may find the progocols buried in some government regulations.
Â
Two: If you know the SNMP that goes in and can control the results that way, figuring out the mapping between the SMNP and a serial stream should not be that hard. It sounds as if you are starting out totally blind.
Â
Three: Scrap them and start over with known equipment from cooperative vendors. That is probably cheaper too, since time is money.
Â
Robert Reavis
Warm Springs Computer Works
Fremont, California
Â
Â
----- Original Message -----
From: HYPERLINK "mailto:dbrudrow@sbcglobal.net"Doug Rudrow
To: HYPERLINK "mailto:vrf@agilent.com"VRF
Sent: Monday, September 25, 2006 1:28 AM
Subject: [vrf] A tough one...
Greetings vrf,
Â
Let me begin by thanking this forum in general and many of you personally for all of your help over the years and especially in the last few months as I’ve begun a new professional adventure. You’ve made the transition into my new position much smoother and made me look good in the process.
Â
Now I find myself begging for help once again. This one may be too much to ask for. I have a piece of equipment, well, to be honest, I’ve got 13 of them, which I need to control. The problem is: This equipment was not designed to be used as test equipment. It is meant to be used by cable providers in their head-end systems. As such, it is designed to be monitored and controlled by a network monitoring system, sold by the manufacturer at an incredibly high price. What this monitoring system does is translate SNMP into a proprietary serial protocol that communicates with these upconverters. We’ve tried to no avail to get the manufacturer to give (or even sell) us the right to use the protocol to control these upconverters for use in a test system. The big question is: is there any way to hack into these upconverters in order to discover the details of the protocol that will allow us to set the frequency and power level? We don’t have the first clue about this protocol, whether it is packet based, what the baud rate is, what the byte size is, whether there are start or stop bits or if there is per byte parity. Are we pretty much hosed or is there a glimmer of hope out there?
Â
Thanks,
Doug
Â
Â
Douglas B. Rudrow
Systems Development Lab Technologist
Aurora Networks
2803 Mission College Blvd.
Santa Clara, California, 95054
U.S.A.
(408) 235-7000 Main
(408) 235 7084 Direct
HYPERLINK "mailto:rvilla@aurora.com"drudrow@aurora.com
dbrudrow@sbcglobal.net
Â
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> company that has "hacked" into the ink market by selling ink at low costs
> because you can't justify using the original high priced ink?
Is it ethical to buy the cheap ink and then complain to HP that the ink
smears
and/or damages your printer?
But "ethics" aside (perhaps to strong a word in this case) hacking protocols
can lead to unexpected results. I'm working on some stuff right now, that
if
hacked could lead to non-operation of the instrument. Who will eat the
warrenty
costs?
~~Les
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talking about a piece of test equipment. I think he's using a piece of
equipment as test equipment that wasn't intended to be used as such.
FWIW I use the OEM Canon printer ink but I prefer the Ilford paper.
Dan
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Â
Let me begin by thanking this forum in general and many of you personally for all of your help over the years and especially in the last few months as I’ve begun a new professional adventure. You’ve made the transition into my new position much smoother and made me look good in the process.
Â
Now I find myself begging for help once again. This one may be too much to ask for. I have a piece of equipment, well, to be honest, I’ve got 13 of them, which I need to control. The problem is: This equipment was not designed to be used as test equipment. It is meant to be used by cable providers in their head-end systems. As such, it is designed to be monitored and controlled by a network monitoring system, sold by the manufacturer at an incredibly high price. What this monitoring system does is translate SNMP into a proprietary serial protocol that communicates with these upconverters. We’ve tried to no avail to get the manufacturer to give (or even sell) us the right to use the protocol to control these upconverters for use in a test system. The big question is: is there any way to hack into these upconverters in order to discover the details of the protocol that will allow us to set the frequency and power level? We don’t have the first clue about this protocol, whether it is packet based, what the baud rate is, what the byte size is, whether there are start or stop bits or if there is per byte parity. Are we pretty much hosed or is there a glimmer of hope out there?
Â
Thanks,
Doug
Â
Â
Douglas B. Rudrow
Systems Development Lab Technologist
Aurora Networks
2803 Mission College Blvd.
Santa Clara, California, 95054
U.S.A.
(408) 235-7000 Main
(408) 235 7084 Direct
HYPERLINK "mailto:rvilla@aurora.com"drudrow@aurora.com
dbrudrow@sbcglobal.net
Â
---
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unpredictable results.
Dan
-----Original Message-----
From: Les Hammer [mailto:Les.Hammer@CompleteTest.com]
Sent: Monday, September 25, 2006 4:28 PM
To: VRF
Subject: RE: [vrf] A tough one...
> Well, if your printer ink costs too much, is it ethical to buy ink
> from a company that has "hacked" into the ink market by selling ink at
> low costs because you can't justify using the original high priced
ink?
Is it ethical to buy the cheap ink and then complain to HP that the ink
smears and/or damages your printer?
But "ethics" aside (perhaps to strong a word in this case) hacking
protocols can lead to unexpected results. I'm working on some stuff
right now, that if hacked could lead to non-operation of the instrument.
Who will eat the warrenty costs?
~~Les
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Â
Ethically as well as technologicaly.
Â
>Â it is designed to be monitored and controlled by a network monitoring system, sold by the manufacturer at an incredibly high price.Â
Â
So, what you are asking us is for a method to by-pass company proprietary commands. If I was the owner of that company I'd be kind of ticked at anybody who suggested a hack into my code. They may have spent a lot of time developing the hardware and software for this system - and both HW and SW may be needed to make the system run smoothly and correctly.  If you by-pass the SW, is the manufacturer still liable if the HW behaves badly?
Â
It looks like it's a difficult job to hack - it may take you some time to design around the manufacturer's system. How much is your time worth? You may spend more time getting your hack job to work than the real code would cost.
Â
At one time I wrote instrument drivers. There were bits that got executed only in corner cases - so a hacker might not see them during "normal" times - but they were still important. We didn't do that to foil the hackers. We just didn't plan things to make their life easy. Any hack job without full documentation is headed for disaster. Even with documentation, if you don't have access to the HW design engineers, can be bad. The proper "init" code for an Agilent counter was about 2 pages long - doing all the right things. The NI plug&play version (written by NI from the documentation instead of Agilent) was about a half page long - they left out some important stuff. That's not to fault NI. Documentation can be difficult to understand if you don't have the time to thoroughly know the instrument. Trust the manufacturer and pay for their expertise.
Â
~~Les Hammer
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Â
Dan
 _____ Â
From: Les Hammer [mailto:Les.Hammer@CompleteTest.com]
Sent: Monday, September 25, 2006 11:19 AM
To: VRF
Subject: RE: [vrf] A tough one...
 > This one may be too much to ask for.Â
Â
Ethically as well as technologicaly.
Â
>Â it is designed to be monitored and controlled by a network monitoring system, sold by the manufacturer at an incredibly high price.Â
Â
So, what you are asking us is for a method to by-pass company proprietary commands. If I was the owner of that company I'd be kind of ticked at anybody who suggested a hack into my code. They may have spent a lot of time developing the hardware and software for this system - and both HW and SW may be needed to make the system run smoothly and correctly.  If you by-pass the SW, is the manufacturer still liable if the HW behaves badly?
Â
It looks like it's a difficult job to hack - it may take you some time to design around the manufacturer's system. How much is your time worth? You may spend more time getting your hack job to work than the real code would cost.
Â
At one time I wrote instrument drivers. There were bits that got executed only in corner cases - so a hacker might not see them during "normal" times - but they were still important. We didn't do that to foil the hackers. We just didn't plan things to make their life easy. Any hack job without full documentation is headed for disaster. Even with documentation, if you don't have access to the HW design engineers, can be bad. The proper "init" code for an Agilent counter was about 2 pages long - doing all the right things. The NI plug&play version (written by NI from the documentation instead of Agilent) was about a half page long - they left out some important stuff. That's not to fault NI. Documentation can be difficult to understand if you don't have the time to thoroughly know the instrument. Trust the manufacturer and pay for their expertise.
Â
~~Les Hammer
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>  or Tek apps guys surprised at how I use the equipment I'm hesitant to put the screws to somebody like this
Â
Perhaps, and if I misinterpreted or over reacted to the question I apologize. There are times when I too
use things in a way not originally intended. That's called "invention."Â
seemed to indicate that the manufacturer provided a solution in two pieces - a HW piece and a SW piece
that needed to work together. Buying half the solution can lead t less than successful results. There may
be a good reason that the manufacturer doesn't release the protocol details. It may be a "razors and blades"
issue - sell the HW at cost and make up for it in SW packages.
Â
~~Les
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Â
Dan
 _____ Â
From: Les Hammer [mailto:Les.Hammer@CompleteTest.com]
Sent: Monday, September 25, 2006 1:53 PM
To: VRF
Subject: RE: [vrf] A tough one...
 >  This might be a little harsh. We don't know the full details and as someone who often has Agilent Â
>  or Tek apps guys surprised at how I use the equipment I'm hesitant to put the screws to somebody like this
Â
Perhaps, and if I misinterpreted or over reacted to the question I apologize. There are times when I too
use things in a way not originally intended. That's called "invention."Â
seemed to indicate that the manufacturer provided a solution in two pieces - a HW piece and a SW piece
that needed to work together. Buying half the solution can lead t less than successful results. There may
be a good reason that the manufacturer doesn't release the protocol details. It may be a "razors and blades"
issue - sell the HW at cost and make up for it in SW packages.
Â
~~Les
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FWIW I use the OEM Canon printer ink but I prefer the Ilford paper.
Dan
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FWIW I use the OEM Canon printer ink but I prefer the Ilford paper.
Dan
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> from a company that has "hacked" into the ink market by selling ink at
> low costs because you can't justify using the original high priced ink?
Is it ethical to buy the cheap ink and then complain to HP that the ink smears and/or damages your printer?
But "ethics" aside (perhaps to strong a word in this case) hacking protocols can lead to unexpected results. I'm working on some stuff right now, that if hacked could lead to non-operation of the instrument. Who will eat the warrenty costs?
~~Les
---
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Dan
-----Original Message-----
From: Les Hammer [mailto:Les.Hammer@CompleteTest.com]
Sent: Monday, September 25, 2006 4:28 PM
To: VRF
Subject: RE: [vrf] A tough one...
> Well, if your printer ink costs too much, is it ethical to buy ink
> from a company that has "hacked" into the ink market by selling ink at
> low costs because you can't justify using the original high priced
ink?
Is it ethical to buy the cheap ink and then complain to HP that the ink smears and/or damages your printer?
But "ethics" aside (perhaps to strong a word in this case) hacking protocols can lead to unexpected results. I'm working on some stuff right now, that if hacked could lead to non-operation of the instrument.
Who will eat the warrenty costs?
~~Les
---
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