Reverse Engineering the VAX Lantronix ETS16P LAT Master Password #VintageComputing #ReverseEngineering

Hans Hübner was going to take a VAX 4000/105A to an upcoming retrocomputing convention as part of my X.25 networking exhibit. He says:

I would also like to provide a couple of serial ports for other exhibitors to connect their machines too, and for that, I have a Lantronix ETS16P terminal server. It is a relatively recent (late 1990ies) device with 16 serial ports on RJ45 connectors and support for TCP/IP and LAT. LAT is a proprietary DEC protocol for local terminal access, and it is what I want to use for the VAX.

Unfortunately, the LAT support of the ETS16P is disabled by default. To enable it, one needs to provide a license code, which back then was an extra cost item.

I downloaded the update file to see whether I could figure out either how the license code was generated so that I could generate one for myself, or patch the firmware to completely disable the license checks.

See how Hans went about reverse engineering the code to find the password to enable LAT in the post here.


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