The Grex "Dungeon"

Historical Note

Grex does not live in the "Dungeon" any more. It has moved to a newer and more modern (and more expensive) location, but is still in Ann Arbor, Michigan. The rest of this site shows the Grex equipment in its former home, the "Dungeon", and since the equipment itself is largely the same, these pictures do give a good idea of what Grex looks like.

The rest of this page has been left intact describing Grex before the move. We do hope to have pictures of the new location, fondly called "The Pumpkin" because of its orange colored walls. Until then, these will have to suffice.

-srw 12 December, 1996.

On with the Show

This page is different from the Grexwalk pages in a number of ways. Instead of taking you along on a walk through the Arboretum, this page takes you on a very short tour of the "Dungeon". At the moment this is where Grex lives, and where it has lived for the last few years. It is in the basement of a house on the west side of Ann Arbor.

The dungeon is a very small space, only 7 by 13 feet. Its entire purpose is to house Grex's collection of computers, telephone interfaces, modems, and other electronic equipment. Most of the time the dungeon is unattended and the lights are off, since this equipment runs by itself, or can be controlled and configured remotely by telephone. Occasionally it is necessary for a staff member of Grex to do maintenance on this equipment, so there are a couple of chairs in the room, but there is not much room for anything else.

Photo #1 - The Entrance View

The first picture shows a complete view of the dungeon from the door which leads out to the basement of the house. On the left in front, you can see "Grex" itself in a large Sun VME Case with a small SCSI "Shoebox" case sitting on top, separated by a pair of books to allow air to flow around the shoebox. Behind them, on the desk are three consoles. The closest one is a 386 PC with a small monochrome monitor on top. That is the "gryps" router. Behind it are two "Ambassador" terminals, both of which are connected directly into Grex and act as consoles. On the left wall there are shelves containing more equipment, but it is hard to make out the different pieces in this particular photo. The bright rectangle is the modem that is attached to the internet link. You can also see a plywood board mounted on the far wall. That contains the incoming telephone connections.

Photo #2 - Closeup View of Grex

This second picture is a close-up view of Grex itself on the right. The SCSI disks and tapes are in the shoebox enclosure on top of the books. To the left, mounted on a plastic crate, is the power conditioner, which provides for glitch-free power to much of the equipment in the dungeon.

Photo #3 - Consoles and Modems

Although Grex is out of sight (to the lower left) in this picture, much of the other equipment that supports Grex is easy to see. In the lower left is Gryps, the Intel 386 which runs FreeBSD, and manages our internet connection. On the lower shelf, at the left end is a Hayes modem which is connected to Gryps and is used to maintain the connection to our internet provider, Innovative Concepts.

To the right of Gryps are two Ambassador terminals which are directly connected to Grex for use as consoles. On the shelf above them are the 11 modems used by the dialup pool. There are 6 GVC V.32bis modems on the left and 5 Supra V.22 (2400 baud) modems on the right. The Supra modems are scheduled to be replaced.

On the top shelf is the ALM II board. It is the serial interface to Grex for all of the incoming modem lines. It is connected directly to Grex, and has a modem cable connected to each modem in the hunt group. It is scheduled to be replaced by a terminal server, but the terminal server was not in the dungeon when this photo was taken.

The text, drawing, and photos for this site were all made by Steve Weiss and are all copyright 1996, Steve Weiss. The phtos were taken on September 24, 1995, and this page was written and posted to the web on August 19, 1996.

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.

The web site was made available by the Huron Valley Community Network. Please direct any comments or suggestions to Steve Weiss at srw@cyberspace.org.