Old network interfaces still alive?

[Dennis Ferguson]

Hello,

I'm wondering if anyone still has (working) hardware for any of
the following networks and, if so, what device drivers they use?

ARCnet
ECOnet
FDDI
HIPPI
Token Ring

I've been doing some work on the the kernel networking which is going
to unavoidably involve a change to the interface to network device
drivers. While I could rewrite support for the L2 networks above
and get it to the point where it compiles, this seems pointless if
there is no one who can actually run the result to test it.

Can anyone run any of these?

Thanks,
Dennis Ferguson

--
Posted automagically by a mail2news gateway at muc.de e.V.
Please direct questions, flames, donations, etc. to news-***@muc.de

[der Mouse]

I'm wondering if anyone still has (working) hardware for any of the
following networks and, if so, what device drivers they use?
ARCnet
ECOnet
FDDI
HIPPI
Token Ring

I have some fiber interfaces which might be suitable for, at least,
FDDI. However, I don't even know whether the hardware works; I don't
have enough working fiber interfaces to test, and I'm not competent to
tell the difference between FDDI and Ethernet-over-glass anyway. For
all I know some of what I have might be something-else-over-glass
(token ring? something more obscure?).

I can do what I can, if someone can handhold me a bit, but my hardware
and my knowledge of its use are pretty limited.

/~\ The ASCII Mouse
\ / Ribbon Campaign
X Against HTML ***@rodents-montreal.org
/ \ Email! 7D C8 61 52 5D E7 2D 39 4E F1 31 3E E8 B3 27 4B

--
Posted automagically by a mail2news gateway at muc.de e.V.
Please direct questions, flames, donations, etc. to news-***@muc.de

[Dennis Ferguson]

Post by der Mouse

I'm wondering if anyone still has (working) hardware for any of the
following networks and, if so, what device drivers they use?
ARCnet
ECOnet
FDDI
HIPPI
Token Ring

I have some fiber interfaces which might be suitable for, at least,
FDDI. However, I don't even know whether the hardware works; I don't
have enough working fiber interfaces to test, and I'm not competent to
tell the difference between FDDI and Ethernet-over-glass anyway. For
all I know some of what I have might be something-else-over-glass
(token ring? something more obscure?).

That's interesting. If it has two fiber connectors (i.e. 4 fibers
total) and/or a little round DIN connector in addition to the fiber
there is a very good chance it is FDDI, but if it only has one
(dual fiber) connector and nothing else it is ambiguous and may
very well be fiber ethernet or something else. Also, if they
were made after about 1998 there's almost no chance they are FDDI;
gigabit ethernet killed what was left of that market.

While my memory is dim, however, I don't think FDDI interfaces by
themselves are enough in any case since I don't think they can just
be connected back-to-back. I have a feeling that a FDDI hub to stick
between them is non-optional, so if you haven't got a hub to go
with the cards there may be no hope in any case.

Dennis Ferguson


--
Posted automagically by a mail2news gateway at muc.de e.V.
Please direct questions, flames, donations, etc. to news-***@muc.de

[David Laight]

Post by Dennis Ferguson
While my memory is dim, however, I don't think FDDI interfaces by
themselves are enough in any case since I don't think they can just
be connected back-to-back. I have a feeling that a FDDI hub to stick
between them is non-optional, so if you haven't got a hub to go
with the cards there may be no hope in any case.

IIRC FDDI is more like token ring than ethernet (wakkypodea suggersts it
is token bus), I think that means you can connect machines directly to each
other - although the cabling would get confusing!

100M ethernet is enough to kill FDDI - since it has fewer failure modes.

ATM to the desktop was, of course, still born :-)

David

[Julian Coleman]

Hi,

Post by David Laight
IIRC FDDI is more like token ring than ethernet (wakkypodea suggersts it
is token bus), I think that means you can connect machines directly to each
other - although the cabling would get confusing!

Most devices that used FDDI were dual-attached, with an A and a B connection.
To create a ring, devices were daisy-chained ogether, with a connection from
the A port on the first device to the B port on the second, and so on until
the A port on the last device was connected to the B port on the first, thus
completing the ring. The FDDI (MIC) connectors:

Loading Image...

had 3 keyed and coloured inserts (stored in the dust cover) so that they
could be connected up the correct way (cables would be usually be keyed as
A->B).

So, connecting devices is simple, as long as they are dual-attached. Single-
attached devices were usually connected to a concentrator, as with only a
single connector, their "ring" could only have two devices.

Post by David Laight
100M ethernet is enough to kill FDDI - since it has fewer failure modes.

For backbones, the resilence of the dual-attched ring was quite nice - breaks
were atomatically handled by wrapping the ring. For desktops, 100Mb ethernet
became a lot cheaper (and smaller) than FDDI, and CDDI didn't really take off,
even though it used the same twisted pair cabling as ethernet.

It's still possible to obtain SBus cards like the one shown on "wakkypodea".
However, I don't know of any with documentation to enable a driver to be
written, so the DEC cards are probably the only ones that we can support.

Post by David Laight
ATM to the desktop was, of course, still born :-)

But, PPPoA is almost ubiquitous in the UK now, so ATM isn't quite dead ;-)

Thanks,

J

PS. The HP docs have quite a nice overview of FDDI:
http://docs.hp.com/en/J2157-90006/ch01s06.html

PPS. I used to help run a university network, where the backbone (and a link
to a neighbouring university) was an FDDI ring based on Cisco AGS+ and
later 75xx routers. The backbone ring was about 3km around and was very
reliable (I can't remember that it ever failed).

[David Laight]

Post by Julian Coleman
It's still possible to obtain SBus cards like the one shown on "wakkypodea".
However, I don't know of any with documentation to enable a driver to be
written, ...

I probably have the source for a driver for said sBus cards...
(Under the assumption there isn't that much choice of manufacturer!)
Certainly we had FDDI on sBus (not solaris) and I might happen to have an
'off-site' backup of the relevant code somewhere.

Actually it is quite likely that the sBus interface is the same DMA2
chip as was used for the amd lance ethernet cards, but with some
standard fddi chipset replacing the lance.

The sBus token ring cards we had were made that way.

David

[Matt Thomas]

Post by Dennis Ferguson
Hello,
I'm wondering if anyone still has (working) hardware for any of
the following networks and, if so, what device drivers they use?
ARCnet
ECOnet
FDDI
HIPPI
Token Ring
I've been doing some work on the the kernel networking which is going
to unavoidably involve a change to the interface to network device
drivers. While I could rewrite support for the L2 networks above
and get it to the point where it compiles, this seems pointless if
there is no one who can actually run the result to test it.
Can anyone run any of these?

I have a DEFTA and a few DEFPA (both FDDI). Might even have a DEFEA
somewhere.

--
Posted automagically by a mail2news gateway at muc.de e.V.
Please direct questions, flames, donations, etc. to news-***@muc.de

[Dennis Ferguson]

Post by Matt Thomas

Post by Dennis Ferguson
Hello,
I'm wondering if anyone still has (working) hardware for any of
the following networks and, if so, what device drivers they use?
ARCnet
ECOnet
FDDI
HIPPI
Token Ring
I've been doing some work on the the kernel networking which is going
to unavoidably involve a change to the interface to network device
drivers. While I could rewrite support for the L2 networks above
and get it to the point where it compiles, this seems pointless if
there is no one who can actually run the result to test it.
Can anyone run any of these?

I have a DEFTA and a few DEFPA (both FDDI). Might even have a DEFEA
somewhere.

Okay. If I get it this far I'll redo the FDDI code and any device
drivers which use it.

Dennis Ferguson

--
Posted automagically by a mail2news gateway at muc.de e.V.
Please direct questions, flames, donations, etc. to news-***@muc.de

[i***@netbsd.org]

Post by Dennis Ferguson
Hello,
I'm wondering if anyone still has (working) hardware for any of
the following networks and, if so, what device drivers they use?
ARCnet

I have ARCnet on Amiga, and can test this, if nobody beats me to it.
Also, I devised the original ARCnet integration, so I should be able
to read and compare code and design documents (hint, hint).

-is