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

[Liam Proven]

On 14 September 2016 at 18:15, tony duell <ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>> > * 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 share your cynicism in general on that point, but this was sold for
_years_ by, IIRC, a little company called EQ Consultants, IIRC.

http://eqc.co.uk/

It was definitely a thing when Ethernet was still too expensive.
Here's a mini-review:

http://www.atarimagazines.com/compute/issue142/70_Getting_wired.php

> 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.

Interesting. I heard of it, certainly, but I never knew of anyone who
actually used it.

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

I saw quite a few decommissioned machines with Econet adaptors, and
I've seen a demo network set up at a show in the last decade I think,
but I don't think I ever saw one in action.

I did see IEE-488 in use, both on CBM PETs and BBC Micros, in
education -- both for storage and for connecting to lab equipment.


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