Thicknet/10base5 Test Segment: The Cable is In!

[Paul Koning]

> On Aug 31, 2018, at 3:25 PM, Grant Taylor via cctalk <cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
> 
> On 08/31/2018 01:07 PM, systems_glitch via cctalk wrote:
>> Yeah, I forget what the original allowed length was for drop cables, but I seem to remember it striking me as quite long! A few feet of CAT5 (or even better, STP) has a lot of wiggle room :P
> 
> I think I've seen reports of multi AUI port taps.  Correct?

You may be thinking of the DELNI, a multi AUI hub.  Not a repeater, apparently.  DEC also made a repeater in that era, the DEREP -- just two ports.  That may be why the DELNI was built, as a way to get more fanout without the complexity of a multiport repeater built out of discrete electronics.

> Could you have one multi-port tap in a computer lab (of 5 ~ 20 machines) and connect them all to the single tap?  Sort of like what is done with 10BaseT cables to a hub in the room?

Yes, the DELNI allowed for that, you'd plug in up to 8 NICs and then connect the uplink port to a transceiver.

	paul