Installation guide

Page 3-8 Chapter Three

AlphaNET Installation Guide, Revision 05

The value defined in the GROUPCOUNT statement must be equal to, or greater than, the number of

groups defined on your network. If you do not include a GROUPCOUNT statement in your network

initialization file, the GROUPCOUNT number defaults to 1. This is not a problem if you only have one

group defined on your network, but if you have more than one group defined, you will not be able to

communicate with all the groups defined on your network.

The NAME statement specifies a symbolic name for each network you define; the NAME statement must

not exceed 20 characters.

Using the specific data about your node and network, use AlphaVUE to create a network initialization

file.

Defining Ersatz Names for Your Network

Dealing directly with AlphaNET internet addresses in the form of cpuIDs can be very cumbersome.

While these eight- to eleven-digit numbers serve to uniquely identify each node on all networks, they are

certainly not intuitively obvious.

Ersatz devices provide a simple way to define a symbolic equivalent to the cpuID numbers. Anyone

wishing to refer to a specific node on the network can then use the symbolic name, rather than the

numeric identifier.

Ersatz devices are defined by the ERSATZ command in the system initialization command file. The

ERSATZ command reads in a text file defining the ersatz device names and their equivalent cpuIDs and

stores them for later use. This text file need only be created once, and then copied to all nodes on the

network.

We recommend you create a separate ersatz device definition file for each network on your computer.

For example, if the network you are installing is Ethernet network 1, create the ersatz device definition

file ETH001.ERZ. The contents of this file, created with AlphaVUE, might look something like:

MAIN: = 16842753-

PRINT: = 16842754-

WRHSE: = 16842755-

PAYROL: = 16842757-

ACCT2: = WRHSE:DSK2:[100,4]

You can use names up to six characters in length (plus the colon). The ersatz definition can contain other

ersatz names, and can specify any part of a complete file specification.

The ERSATZ command may be used multiple times within the system initialization command file to

process multiple ersatz device specification files. All of the ERSATZ commands, however, must be

grouped together, with no intervening commands, before the first SYSTEM command. For example:

ERSATZ ETH101.ERZ

ERSATZ ETH102.ERZ

ERSATZ SER003.ERZ