phil@amdcad.UUCP (Phil Ngai) (04/22/86)
Graham, I have an idea I'd like to ask you about. It seemed too obvious
to have been overlooked but what the heck, I'll ask anyway.
The DEC DESTA has a DB-15 connector for the Ethernet station and one
BNC connector for the ThinWire Ethernet cable. You are supposed to put
a BNC "T" connector on this to get to the cable.
Why not have two BNC connectors on the DESTA? You will always need to
use both. It will cost more but I'm sure the customer will be willing
to pay the extra cost since money is saved by not needing the "T".
--
A woman who would rather have beauty than brains because men supposedly
can see better than they can think had better settle for beauty because
she clearly doesn't have much in the way of brains.
Phil Ngai +1 408 749 5720
UUCP: {ucbvax,decwrl,ihnp4,allegra}!amdcad!phil
ARPA: amdcad!phil@decwrl.dec.comchriso@3comvax.UUCP (Chris Olds) (04/23/86)
[ I did not see <2443@decwrl.DEC.COM>, so don't expect miracles ]
3Com's ASD (of which I am a part) just moved into a new building which we
had pre-wired for (thin) Ethernet, and we have spare BNC T connectors in all
of the offices (a normal office will have three). This allows us to add or
move machines around quite freely without breaking the net. If the devices
being connected do not have a connector meant for connection to a T, we have
to take the net apart to move or install it. This should not be a serious
problem because BNC connections can be made in under a second, well under
the timeout period for most software. The problem comes when someone does
not seat the connectors properly, and you get an intermittent network
failure as the cables are kicked and jostled. It is much easier to tell
people never to break the main net - if they want to move a machine (or add
one), all they do is (dis)connect the T from net to the machine (of course
engineers always want to reconfigure the part of the net that runs through
their offices, but T's save a lot of grief from non-technical folks that
just want to move their PC (and don't understand why the net went down -
all they did was open the cable for THEIR office)).
Chris Olds {hplabs,glacier}!oliveb!3comvax!chriso
"This is not a disclaimer"