IBM PC Connecting to DECNET

Bill Gunshannon bill.gunshannon at hotmail.com
Fri Jun 3 07:55:43 CDT 2022


On 6/3/22 08:46, Antonio Carlini via cctalk wrote:
> On 03/06/2022 03:09, Rick Murphy via cctalk wrote:
>> On 6/1/2022 12:49 AM, Glen Slick via cctalk wrote:
>>> No one ever called it a "Digital Ethernet Personal Computer Bus
>>> Adapter", just a DEPCA. I never previously knew that there was any
>>> meaning behind the DEPCA name.
>>
>> Yes, that's what it meant. "DELNI" - Digital Ethernet Local Network 
>> Interface. "DESTA" - Digital Ethernet Station Termination Adapter. 
>> DELQA - Digital  Ethernet Local Q-Bus Adapter (this one probably means 
>> something else. Working?). DEMPR - Multi Port Repeater. DEREP - 
>> Repeater.  And so forth. Yeah, nobody spelled it out, but those DExxx 
>> names usually meant what the device was. DEBNT, DEUNA, DEQNA. Same 
>> naming convention. I'm probably missing several.
>>     -Rick
>>
> The DEPCA manual 
> (http://www.bitsavers.org/pdf/dec/ethernet/depca/EK-DEPCA-PR-001_Apr89.pdf) 
> says "DIGITAL Ethernet Personal Computer Adapter", without "Bus".
> 
> DELQA was "DIGITAL Ethernet Local-Area-Network to Q-bus Adapter" 
> according to its user guide.
> 
> It's predecessor, the DEQNA, was "Digital ETHERNET Q-Bus Network 
> Adapter", according to its user guide, or "broken", according to most 
> people :-)
> 

I see comments like this all the time but I used DEQNA, DELQA,
DELUA and DEUNA for years with minimal problems.  I think most
of the complaints originate after more modern networking equipment
showed up and people's expectations rose beyond the abilities
of the technology.  Like crashing systems by flooding network
segments with traffic.

bill



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