21 Jan
2014
21 Jan
'14
3:23 p.m.
On Jan 20, 2014, at 4:23 PM, Al Kossow wrote:
Just throwing this out to see what other people
think.
I suspect we're at the tail end of the usage life of devices that don't speak
IP.
I'm mostly thinking about networking devices 80's > 00's
So, what needs to be preserved? How much of this does CHM need to do? Is any other
collecting institution already covering this? How much is within scope?
Al, you are probably very far ahead of me, but I have two suggestions:
1) ?bridge? pieces - the Kindergarten example is probably a Dayna EtherPrint-T or Asante
EN/SC type device that allowed a LocalTalk network to bridge to an Ethertalk network. In
terms of long-term, serious restoration/preservation, having one of those available means
having a device that could be (maybe) deconstructed to give information about both types
of network. It also seems pretty helpful to anyone trying to restore hardware on the
less-used (LocalTalk) side.
2) Interconnects used to parallelize processors in supercomputer families - Infiniband and
the like. This may be a hard goal, but it could be that retiring supercomputer sites may
have the stuff available, and recalling the Cray software discussion going on now, this
might be a good time to ask. And, looking far ahead, some characteristics of these
interconnects will be needed to supply the voracious data demands being put on the
internet, so they may serve as prototypes for data center interconnects in widespread use
years from now.
My two cents, HTH.
- Mark