All this talk of token rings has reminded me of the original Cambridge ring.
In the early 80's a project in the CS department where I was working was going
to set up a Cambridge ring. A bunch of hardware was ordered and received from
England: as I recall the network nodes were a yellow metal box around
12"*16"*4" with a hinged door and PCB, etc. inside.
At the same time, Ethernet (thickwire, of course) was becoming current and
wire was pulled through the CS building to accommodate both Ethernet and
Cambridge ring (I think the decision-makers were hedging bets as to which
technology was going to predominate). The Cambridge ring nodes sat on a shelf
for years and were never used, while various machines (primarily a VAX780 and
750) went on the ethernet. I think a lot of the issue was availability of
processor interface hardware/drivers.
Anybody recall or have some of these nodes? Is there a Cambridge ring running
anywhere? (Bletchley perhaps.)