rose@atexnet.UUCP (Robert Rose) (05/02/89)
Hi, a few items to discuss: 1) Ethernet connections: Having talked to several different vendors, and people here, I wanted to share the news with you all. If you already have thin ethernet forget this, you're all set. If you have thick ethernet, read on. For you NeXT people, it would have been very helpful if the following info (or something close) is printed somewhere for the benefit of people with thick ethernet! There are basically three ways you can hook your NeXT machine to a thick ethernet backbone. In order of cost and 'goodnes': 1) If the physical end of the ethernet is near enough to your NeXT machine, and if you're only hooking up a small number of machines (< ~10? ) and they're all within about 50? meters then you can do this: InMac (Hudson NH) (and other vendors, I'm sure) sell a thick-to-BNC (BNC==thin) adaptor. This is ONLY for the end of the Ethernet. The part number from Inmac is 1064-7. Simply unscrew the thick terminator (the net will go down while it's unterminated!), and screw in the adaptor (make sure you get the right gender, or a gender changer!). A standard BNC-BNC thin ethernet cable can then screw into that and into the CUBE (make sure you terminate it). If you ask the vendors about this, they may deny it will work because they want to sell you (2) or (3) below!! We did this and it works. Cost is about $20.00. 2) If you are no where near the end, you need to get a transciever tap. Inmac and Cabletron (also in NH) have these. These run about $300. Besides being able to tap into the net anywhere, you can string much longer after the transciever, and have more machines daisy chanained out than #1 above. 3) The last alternative (and what Cabletron will try to sell you if you call!) is a repeater box. These run about $800-$1200. The advantage of these is that after the repeater box, you have virtually a brand new ethernet, so you can go VERY far, and have LOTS AND LOTS of machines after it. Once we where on the ethernet, it wasn't too hard to get the machine to talk to the rest of the world, however, there is a problem with the yellow pages (I'm on .8). In the /etc/passwd file there is an entry at the end: me:XQRTx7bzjBe/Y:20:20:My Account:/bootdisk/Homes/me:/bin/csh rose:vca9KF7qnaQmw:62:10:Robert Rose:/bootdisk/Homes/rose:/bin/csh +::0:0::: ^^^ this one ^^^ that means go look in the yellow pages for other users. The NeXT machine currently does not do this. Bob Rose