31 Mar
2015
31 Mar
'15
6:19 a.m.
From: Rich Alderson
SAIL .. did not use the MEIS (Massbus-Ethernet
Interface Subsystem) for
Ethernet connectivity, but rather a Unibus card from Xerox (apparently
used to hook -11s to D-machines) which went into the front end 11/40 on
the KL-10.
If this is the card I'm thinking of (we got two as part of the Xerox donation
of Altos, a Dover, etc to MIT, BITD), it's to a 3-MBit Experimental Ethernet,
not to a 10-MBit Ethernet, and so won't be much use unless you have something
else with a 3-MBit Ethernet (and of course you'd also need 3-MBit
transceivers, etc, etc).
And of courset those cards were made in very, very limited numbers; if any
survive to this day, I will be absolutely astonished.
If you have a pointer to the PDP-11 code, I can take a look at it and confirm
if it's a 3-MBit card. (The hardware packet header format is completely
different from that for a 10-MBit.)
Noel