Subj : Re: Networking my Vintage Homelab
To   : Spectre
From : poindexter FORTRAN
Date : Tue Dec 05 2023 06:23:00

-=> Spectre wrote to poindexter FORTRAN <=-

 Sp> Hehe, horses for courses... Ethernet without significant load ought to
 Sp> be faster than Token Ring. Of course as soon as you load it up, and CD
 Sp> and resolution were a bit more ordinary..

 A different world... at one company we had 20-30 users on shared
 ethernet hubs, then used a 5 port switch as a collapsed backbone - that
 way you could share files/printers in your group and not be affected by
 traffic elsewhere.

 We had to do a lot of balancing to make it work, but it was worlds
 better than the coax ethernet it replaced.

 Sp> Only ever saw the odd ARCnet
 Sp> card.. and by the TokenRing cards were popping up, thin ethernet was
 Sp> already in use.. There's also meant to be an 8Mbp TokenRing too If'n I
 Sp> recall right..

 Any time you needed a small workgroup back in the early '90s, people
 recommended ARCnet - maybe because it was robust and (mostly)
 trouble-free. You'd need to set a card ID on jumpers, so it needed some
 documentation to prevent duplicate IDs when you added more systems, but
 you could set up a star topology with a passive hub over coax easily.


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