NCR systems access point

[Bruce Janson]

Stuart,

    ..
    From: Stuart <stuart at coscom.net>
    ..
    I am hoping someone may be able to offer me some advice or may have had 
    some experience with this product I have been wrestling with all day. I 
    have been given the task of installing two (very old and ugly looking) 
    wireless access points.
    
    The access points themselves have an ethernet interface (with coax, rj45 
    and AUI? inputs) and a wavelan interface. I am told they are old 2mb/s 
    access points / bridges. They are cream colored boxes, rectangular with 
    a bit jutting out for the power lead. They have 4 dip switches and a 
    reset button. On top there are 3 leds. They seem to be for power, wlan 
    and lan.
    
    They don't reveal much about themselves, all that is written on them is 
    the following:
    
    - NCR Systems Engineering B.V. UTERCHT.
    ..

s/UTERCHT/UTRECHT/  It's in The Netherlands.

    - Class No: 3105
    - Model Number: 0111
    
    I presume this is useless information about voltages etc?
    
    - VAC. 100-125
    - A. 0.4
    - Hz. 50 - 60
    - LR 76667
    
    - VAC. 220-240
    - A. 0.15
    - Hz. 50 - 60
    
    It also reveals further useless information like the fact that they were 
    made in taiwan, mac addresses of the "wavelan" / "wired lan" interfaces 
    and the product serial numbers.
    
    Taking the case off, I found a few chips (surprise, surprise!). The main 
    chips are labeled XILINX, CHIPS, HARRIS/INTEL and another one with a 
    very intel looking "i" on it. However, taking the second one apart, the 
    chip labled XILINX was labeled AT&T.
    ..
    hasn't helped me much. Searches on the class and model numbers don't 
    seem to find anything and without a name for the product, I really don't 
    know what I'm looking for.
    ..

They were called "Wavepoint"s.

    My main problem (I guess? besides possible authentication problems) is 
    that I have no idea what the IP addresses are. I plugged one into a 
    linux box with a crossover cable and ran tcpdump on the interface. It 
    showed no traffic whatsoever. It didn't attempt to use a DHCP server, or 
    send any broadcast traffic that I am aware of. The arp table obviously 
    shows nothing.
    
    Does anyone know where I can find any documentation on these? What the 
    dip switches do? If there is a way I can make it reveal it's ip address? 
    If they are actually useful as nothing more than boat anchors? I'm 
    pretty stumped on these. Any help would be great!
    ..

If memory serves the Wavepoints were just simple bridges.  You should
be able to plug in an antenna and ethernet cable (perhaps thin coax,
not RJ45 UTP) and it should start passing packets back and forth
between the wired and wireless interfaces.  The interfaces might not
have had IP addresses but I do seem to remember that they responded to
SNMP calls.  (Sorry, I don't have a MIB.)

NCR made them (along with the original WaveLANs) before AT&T bought
them out.  They predate the newer 802.11 wireless devices and so I
don't expect that they will interoperate with newer wireless equipment.
However, they certainly do work with the old WaveLAN 2Mbits/s, full-length
ISA cards.

Good luck getting them going.

Regards,
bruce.