20 Aug
2020
20 Aug
'20
10:59 a.m.
Starlan was pretty big in its' day. When I worked at IRD/Westinghouse in
1988 I walked into a Novell network that was running 2.01 on a Starlan
network. If I recall there were 8 port hubs that were chained together
in a daisy chain configuration: I think those were bell labs hubs.
Anyway the PC's all had 8 bit ISA cards as well as the 286 server. It
was good, relatively reliable, and ran on the existing twisted pair
phone lines wired against 66 pin punchblocks and USOC wiring format.
We bought a Synoptics LattisNet 10 later on and put a NP600 card in the
server to route the traffic. The NP600 was sweet: It had an 80186
processor on board and could run a good chunk of the IPX stack on card
so it didn't burden the CPU. Coupling that with a Novell smart disk
adapter (which could do hardware mirroring and hot fix) and the CPU was
surprisingly quiet on the server.
Ah those were the days. It was after that job I got introduced to Arcnet....
On 8/20/2020 1:50 AM, Mike Begley via cctalk wrote:
Wow. I ran StarLan 1 around my apartment in college,
using an AT&T 3b1 as the hub and a collection of 8088 PCs with 8-bit ISA cards
scattered around. I could rlogin (not telnet, from my recollection) from any of the PCs
to the 3B1, and dial out through a 14.4 modem into the university network. Only one at a
time, mind you, I never got SL/IP or PPP running, but still, it was like living into the
future. A network...in my own house!
To my recollection, StarLan was entirely an AT&T product, and few if any other
vendors supported it.
I MAY still have the StarLan board for the 3B1 around (along with most of the 3B1
disassembled in parts). But all the PC cards, the hub and documentation are long gone. I
believe I sold them to someone in Yellowknife, but this would have been well over a
quarter century ago.
You might be able to find some additional info in the archives in the comp.sys.3b1 usenet
group. Shockingly, I just noted that has actually been a smattering of on-topic (not
spam) chatter there in the last few years, even as recently as April, so there's a
handul of users still out there with these machines in hand.
Good luck,
-mike
-----Original Message-----
From: cctalk <cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org> On Behalf Of Steven M Jones via
cctalk
Sent: Wednesday, August 19, 2020 7:55 PM
To: cctalk at classiccmp.org
Subject: Network gear that supported StarLAN 1 (not 10)
I was wondering if anybody remembers which networking vendors supported StarLAN 1, or
802.3e / 1Base5, back in the 1980s? Hoping to get product names and/or model numbers.
I've come across some references to Western Digital, Micom-Interlan, Cross Comm Corp
(Massachusetts), and Fox Research (later DCA?) possibly having offered products to bridge
StarLAN to Ethernet. But in the few cases where I've seen a model (ex. Cross Comm 487
Series) I haven't been able to get past blurbs in Info World.
I have one host interface, expect more to arrive shortly, and would love to track down a
bridge/switch/router that might allow me to make them reachable from Ethernet.
Thanks,
--Steve.