aar_osman@GSBACD.UCHICAGO.EDU (02/02/90)
The cable length, cable-type, etc. seems to depend on the tolerances of the transceiver. We found that the 3-Com transceivers will tolerate many standards violations such as length, transceiver spacing, and even putting T-stubs on the thin-net cable segments. This applies to 3-Com's external transceiver for attachment to thick segments as well as their on-board thinnet transceiver. If you stretch the 3-Com boards to the limit, you will start getting "dribble errors" or "too many collissions" when you run 3C501 diagnostics. However, if they pass diagnostics, it is a good bet that 3-plus will work. Howevers, Novell seems to be more sensitive to packet losses and Netware workstations may still time-out with the all too familiar "server not found" message. Western Digital boards, on the other hand, are less tolerant to cable spec violations. WD diagnostics will often fail in such a LAN even though your board-level diagnostics will pass if you add a fully terminated T-connecter to the board. However, we have seen that Novell shell will run without problems even though you cannot get the diagnostics to fly. I hope this partially answers Dave Molta's inquiry on the real-world Ethernet specs. /Osman Voice: 312-567-6751