Simple peer to peer network?

With only 2 ports the best topology you can get is a ring. You didn't say what you the application was, but i'll assume some sort of demo-ware. You might want to talk to all the nodes, so unique addressing might be an issue. But more likely loop-less flooding is what you want. That should be easy on a ring. if everyone has a unique id you just forward (and copy) everything which you didn't send. or use a hop count which starts at 64 :-) You might look at the Amoeba o/s and implement a simple IPC like it did. You could then distribute work via the IPC. Since these are small machines you might also consider something more like the original connection machine (CM-2). Everyone runs the exact same code and you send results back and forth. You won't be synchronous like the CM-2 but you could sync up with your serial ports. I'd bet you could make some fun demo-ware with a few LED's on each machine (or 3, like R,G,B) -brad