acmpres@zeus.unomaha.edu (Dave Caplinger, Microcomputer Specialist) (09/29/90)
Here's some wishful thinking for you... (Apple, please surprise the heck out of me and have had the foresight to do this!) With respect to Ethernet-on-board, consider the serial port on the back of your Mac. Also, consider the port on the ImageWriter II. It can accept either "ImageWriter Speak" or "AppleTalk ImageWriter Speak", which are in fact different (try printing to a non-AppleTalk ImageWriter as a "AppleTalk I..." (as it looks in Chooser). Same port, different logic, different protocols. Now about that Twisted-Pair Ethernet... who's to say that it's not possible for some software (i.e. device driver) to switch the serial port not just between "serial speak" (as to a Modem, fax, or non-AppleTalk printer) and "AppleTalk speak", but also to "TwistedTalk EtherSpeak" or whatever. Wires are wires, I guess. So what if most of them aren't used for TwistedTalk, or that you might need a different connector box. Better yet, wouldn't it be great if this was already built into the new Macs, and once the Standard Committee has given 10baseT it's blessing, Apple can say "oh well guess what! It's already implemented, and since we took so long getting System 7.0 out the door, the driver for it is included with Sys 7." It's really can't be all that hard to figure out what the "blessed" standard is going to be; Farallon already guarantees that their products will work with 10baseT, right? :-) Go for it, Apple. Surprise us. Hell, if you do this, you'll probably surprise just about everyone. :-) -/ Dave Caplinger /--------------------------------------------------------- President, Student Chapter of ACM at the University of Nebraska at Omaha acmpres@zeus.unomaha.edu ..!uunet!unocss!dent ACMPRES@UNOMA1