13 Dec
2021
13 Dec
'21
1:44 p.m.
On Mon, Dec 13, 2021 at 3:09 PM Grant Taylor via cctalk
<cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
On 12/12/21 10:28 PM, Ethan Dicks via cctalk wrote:
The Doom application contained a network stack that would handle the
higher layers. IIRC, you still had to load a packet driver shim, but
perhaps not. It's been a loooong time since I've done it.
But you definitely could play up to 4 players when each machine had an
ARCnet card. Ethernet cards worked too but they cost a lot more at
the time.
I haven't used ARCnet since we used to use it
for 4-player Doom
(especially since not everyone in the gaming group had Ethernet at
home yet and it was easy to make a passive 4-port ARCnet hub.
I find this statement interesting for a couple of different reasons:
1) Paying Doom over ARCnet. -- I don't think I realized that ARCnet
was standardized enough that normal networking applications would work
over it. -- Naivety on my part. 2) "it was easy to make a passive 4-port ARCnet
hub" ... I don't know
how to respond to that with anything but curiosity and /many/ open ended
questions.
https://apenwarr.ca/arcnet/howto/cabling.html
You just take 4 BNCs and 4 resistors. Tie all the grounds together
(can use a metal bar or wire or whatever) and connect one resistor to
each core and tie all 4 resistors together.
In other words, ARCnet supports a Star topology that Ethernet does
not. It's a token-passing scheme, not CSMA (collision detection).
Cheers,
-ethan
--
Grant. . . .
unix || die