a186@mindlink.UUCP (Harvey Taylor) (04/10/90)
Excuse the repost, but this one seems to been lost in the flame wars.
Some time ago I was asking about a cheap serial network for the Amiga.
I have the school teaching friend who wants to network 14 Amigas.
I received an encouraging reply from Doug Walker to the effect that
Matt had said something like this was possible, with the right cable.
I fired off some mail to Matt Dillon asking about the feasibility
of this & eventually, got a reply that the problem was the serial port
chips.
Meanwhile I had started reading up on Networks myself & came up with
a couple of relevant magazine articles.
Byte, October/1981, Page 50: Ultra-Low-Cost Network for Personal
Computers by Ken Clements & Dave Daugherty
Circuit Cellar, April/May/1989, Page 46: Creating a Network-based
Embedded Controller by Jeff Bachiochi
This last reference shows how to use a 75176 (Differential Bus
Transceiver RS-485) with a garden variety serial port. ie it solves
[for up to 32 nodes] the problem of overloading the serial chips which
Matt Dillon mentioned.
Now the thing I wonder about is the DNET code. I have poked around in
the DNET source, although I am not all that conversant in C, and I don't
see anything resembling Collision Detection. It seems to me that if I
put 15 A500s on an ULCNet, they are quickly going to hang with garbage
generated by collisions.
Could someone more conversant with the DNET particulars comment on
this, please.
<-Harvey
"Now, more than ever, it is evident that `good taste' only refers to
that which reinforces the status quo." -Andre Peret
Harvey Taylor Meta Media Productions
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