madler@piglet.caltech.edu (Mark Adler) (10/16/90)
Here is cheapest kosher way that I know of to connect the NeXT to a thick net, straight from the horse's mouth ... -- Cabletron sells a MR-2000C Singleport Repeater for $695 that does -- exactly what you need. The local number I have for them is -- (408) 441-9900. -- -- Brent Loschen -- NeXT Systems Engineer There are other non-kosher possibilities, such as splicing a thin coax into a thick coax directly (major reflection problems likely there), or yanking the transceiver chip in the NeXT and using the signal pairs that come into that chip to connect to a think-net transceiver. Mark Adler madler@piglet.caltech.edu
croehrig@audiolab.UWaterloo.ca (Chris J. Roehrig) (10/17/90)
A cheap way to connect to thick ethernet is through a gateway. This isn't as expensive as it sounds. We have an old door-stop PC XT clone with two Western Digital cards (WD8003E Ethercard Plus, $250 CDN each; you should be able to get them for under $200 (US$)) running Vance Morrison's PCRoute (available via ftp from accuvax.nwu.edu in pub/pcroute). One ethercard runs thin-wire to your NeXT (and any other machines you have; the thin-wire is your own subnet). The other card is connected directly to the thickwire tranceiver drop (NOT directly to the thick-wire itself); you need a tranceiver and a drop cable. If you already have those, fine; if not they cost about $300; your network hardware guy will be happy to install one for you and bill it to your grant). You'll need Internet ID's for the NeXT, both ethernet ports on the PC, and a subnet address. The speed of the gateway is extensively documented in the docs for PCRoute. For an 4.77MHz XT, the throughput is 1.8 Mbit/sec; for a 16MHz AT, it's 4.1 Mbit/sec. Unless you are regularly doing some serious data transfer, you won't notice any lack of speed with the 4.77 MHz clunker. So if you have a thick-wire drop and a PC lying around (we got ours free from CS labs who are unloading truckloads of them), the total cost is $400-$500 and you have your own thinwire subnet. (And as an extra bonus, you don't have your network administrator screaming at you for mucking about on his net :-) ) We also have a bunch of PC's (with Ethercards) connected to the subnet running NCSA's Telnet (ftp.ncsa.uiuc.edu) each of which provides a really slick multi-session terminal into our NeXT. Chris Roehrig Audio Research Group University of Waterloo, Canada
izumi@violet.berkeley.edu (Izumi Ohzawa) (10/17/90)
In article <1990Oct17.060749.25879@watserv1.waterloo.edu> croehrig@audiolab.UWaterloo.ca (Chris J. Roehrig) writes: >A cheap way to connect to thick ethernet is through a gateway. This isn't >as expensive as it sounds. We have an old door-stop PC XT clone with >two Western Digital cards (WD8003E Ethercard Plus, $250 CDN each; you should >be able to get them for under $200 (US$)) running Vance Morrison's PCRoute >(available via ftp from accuvax.nwu.edu in pub/pcroute). [stuff deleted] >So if you have a thick-wire drop and a PC lying around (we got ours free >from CS labs who are unloading truckloads of them), the total cost is >$400-$500 and you have your own thinwire subnet. (And as an extra bonus, >you don't have your network administrator screaming at you for mucking >about on his net :-) ) Let me add a few points. If you want to put NeXTs onto the same subnet as the thick-net portion, you can use the same hardware as described above, and run "PCbridge" by Vance Morrison. This is a companion to "PCRoute" and is available from the same host by anonymous FTP (see above). If there are a Thicknet drop (blue cable with DB15 connector) already in the room and a free PC, you can connect MULTIPLE NeXTs to the network essentially for the cost of a single-port repeater (maybe less). The doc for PCbridge says that it does packet filtering too so that the local traffic on Thin-net and Thick-net won't be forwarded across the bridge. We've been running this bridge setup for over 6 months using a 4.7MHz PC with no monitor. I am very happy with it's performance and reliability. I haven't touched this box for months. Izumi Ohzawa, izumi@violet.berkeley.edu
phd_ivo@gsbacd.uchicago.edu (10/18/90)
***************** Also, as far as the new NeXTs are concerned, there is no problem with thick-net Ethernet at all, since it provides either thin or thick ethernet, although I understand that only one of the can function at any one time. All the solutions described are about how to hook up a 030 cube, not 040 cubes... /ivo welch ivo@next.agsm.ucla.edu
mdixon@parc.xerox.com (Mike Dixon) (10/18/90)
Also, as far as the new NeXTs are concerned, there is no problem with
thick-net Ethernet at all, since it provides either thin or thick
ethernet, although I understand that only one of the can function at
any one time. All the solutions described are about how to hook up a
030 cube, not 040 cubes...
no such luck. 040 nexts have thin net & twisted-pair (10baseT), but
still no thick net.
--
.mike.