early networking (was Re: G4 cube (was Re: 68K Macs with MacOS 7.5 still in production use...))

[tony duell]

> > * LittleBigLAN    (never heard of or saw)
> > * The $25 Network (never heard of or saw)
> 
> Odd... They were sold in the UK as being American imports...

Dare I suggest that perhaps they flopped in the states so they
tried to flog them to us :-)

> I never saw CP/M networked in my life.

I've never seen it in operation, but the Gemini
Galaxy (somewhat based on the Nascom, with
the same bus) had a network option. It was a little
board that hung off the parallel connector on the
CPU board. The one I have had had all the numbers
scratched off the ICs, it took me about 2 minutes 
to realise that the main 40 pin IC was a dumb
UART. The rest of the board was a bit of logic
to interface it to the parallel port, a clock
generator and RS485 buffers.

Wasn't there some kind of network for the
RML380Z and 480Z machines?

Of course the common network in UK schools
in the early 80s was Econet (Acorn's network 
for the BBC micro, Atom, etc).

-tony