[COFF] Archived A Couple 5ESS Training Programs

[COFF] Archived A Couple 5ESS Training Programs

[segaloco via COFF]

I've just uploaded a couple new items to archive.org that
folks may find interesting:

https://archive.org/details/5ess-2000-switch-es5431-office-data-base-1998
https://archive.org/details/5ess-2000-switch-es5432-system-analysis-1998

Linked above are the ES5431 (Office Data Base Installation)
and ES5432 (System Analysis) training CDs as produced by
Bell Laboratories (Lucent era) for the 5ESS-2000 switch.
Among other things, these CDs contain a 5ESS simulator which
you can see a screenshot of here:

https://www.classicrotaryphones.com/forum/index.php?topic=28001.msg269652#msg269652

I was able to successfully get it to run on Windows 98 SE in
a virtual machine, although did break one rule of archiving
optical media in that I didn't take iso rips.  I intend to
throw an old FreeBSD hard disk in that computer sometime soon
and do some proper rips with dd(1).  In the meantime,
this means using the above archives presents only a partial
experience in that the Training section of the software
appears to depend on the original discs being inserted.

In any case, the simulator interests me greatly.  I intend
to do a little digging around in it as time goes on to see
if there may be traces of 3B20 emulation or DMERT in the
guts.  I'm not holding my breath, but who knows.  Either way,
it'll be interesting to play with.  Thus far I've only
verified the simulator launches, but have done nothing
with it yet.  Picked up Steele's Common Lisp (2nd Edition)
in the same eBay session so time will be split between this,
learning Lisp, and plenty of other little oddball projects
I have going, but if I find anything interesting I'll be
sure to share.

Given that Nokia is shedding 5ESS stuff pretty heavily right
now (or so I've heard) I have to wonder if more of this
stuff will start popping up in online market places.  Word
over on the telephone forum is that some folks in Nokia
do have an interest in preserving 5ESS knowledge and
materials but are getting the expected apathy and lack of
engagement from higher ups.  Hopefully this at least means
Nokia doesn't mind too much this stuff getting archived if
they don't have to do any of the footwork :)

- Matt G.

[COFF] Re: Archived A Couple 5ESS Training Programs

[Andrew Warkentin]

On 2/20/24, segaloco via COFF <coff@tuhs.org> wrote:
>
> In any case, the simulator interests me greatly.  I intend
> to do a little digging around in it as time goes on to see
> if there may be traces of 3B20 emulation or DMERT in the
> guts.  I'm not holding my breath, but who knows.  Either way,
> it'll be interesting to play with.  Thus far I've only
> verified the simulator launches, but have done nothing
> with it yet.

I've installed the simulator and it doesn't appear to be based on any
kind of 3B20 emulation (unlike the emulator used on the VCDX's
administrative module). It's mostly a collection of DLLs and what
appear to be some kind of table files.  I guess it could be a port of
the actual 5ESS UI code to Windows, but I'm not quite sure of that.

[COFF] Re: Archived A Couple 5ESS Training Programs

[Brad Spencer]

Andrew Warkentin <andreww591@gmail.com> writes:

> On 2/20/24, segaloco via COFF <coff@tuhs.org> wrote:
>>
>> In any case, the simulator interests me greatly.  I intend
>> to do a little digging around in it as time goes on to see
>> if there may be traces of 3B20 emulation or DMERT in the
>> guts.  I'm not holding my breath, but who knows.  Either way,
>> it'll be interesting to play with.  Thus far I've only
>> verified the simulator launches, but have done nothing
>> with it yet.
>
> I've installed the simulator and it doesn't appear to be based on any
> kind of 3B20 emulation (unlike the emulator used on the VCDX's
> administrative module). It's mostly a collection of DLLs and what
> appear to be some kind of table files.  I guess it could be a port of
> the actual 5ESS UI code to Windows, but I'm not quite sure of that.


I am not familiar with this particular simulator, but it could simply be
a program or program set that was made to look like the 5E without
anything from the actual 5E being involved.  I was involved a bit with
simulating switch responses for the OSS system I worked on at
AT&T/Lucent and that was done mostly with either stand alone programs
which simply responded minimally like the caller expected or later with
a simulation engine that a coworker wrote that could be programmed to
respond in a more complete and configurable manor than the stand lones
could do.  We never used any of the actual switch code to do any of
this, just used what the documentation said would be the call and then
generated a response.  As far as I know these simulators never left our
group.  I also wrote for, my own purposes, a simulator that simulated
the backend of the OSS system I worked on so that I could point an
instance of the web / HTML based UI I was writing for said system
without having to actually have a backend system present and do
development.  In fact, much of my own development on the Web UI for that
OSS system was done in the simulated environment first.  I would not be
suprised that the training group came up with a way to simulate the 5E
UI based just on the inputs and outputs.







-- 
Brad Spencer - brad@anduin.eldar.org