[rescue] FDDI primer

[Dave McGuire]

On January 17, Andrew Weiss wrote:
> I would... I'm definitely entertaining the notion of running FDDI in the
> house since I have 10 or so computers I wish to network and for now I have
> an 8 port 10/100 Workgroup hub.  I wish to keep the main machines (PPro
> and a Mac) running at 100MBps on fast ethernet (to play Diablo II and
> other games), but the rest of the machines I own are all 10Mbps.  I could
> get a switch, or I could literally segment the network with a router
> (something I want to do eventually anyhow), but my Crimson has a FDDI
> board in it now - Thanks Dan... so I'd like to slowly get started.  There
> are what appears to be four gold connectors (from memory) that look like
> tiny BNC ports. (I could start a FDDI ring with one machine being the
> gateway to the fast ethernet segment, and perhaps another machine for a
> cheapo trash hub 10Mbps segment... or I could just try to get FDDI for all
> the older equipment...not likely...)

  You can get FDDI for most stuff made within the past 15 years.

  The FDDI interface in your Crimson is likely an Interphase 4211.
The four little gold connectors you see are standard ST fiber
connectors.  That is a DAS (dual-attach station) board...two Tx and
two Rx ports, one pair for each attachment.

> IBM RS/6000 MCA 7006 41T AUI -> TP (will run AIX 4.3.3)

  MCA FDDI boards show up from time to time on eBay...they've
typically gone for between $10 and $30.  I picked one up for $5 about
two months ago.

> Sun Sparc LX (Will probably run Solaris 7, or maybe 8)

  Sbus FDDI...

> Sun Sparcstation 2 (Will probably run SuSE 7.1 Linux... or maybe NetBSD)

  No Linux or NetBSD support for Sbus FDDI yet. :-(

> HP 9000 712/100 (NEXTSTEP or HP-UX... haven't decided... probably not
> compatible with the former)

  No idea.

> Powermac 8100/80AV (Yellowdog Linux)
> Quadra 840AV (Debian 2.2r3)

  There are NuBus FDDI cards floating around, but I've never seen
drivers.  Geoff Adams has one of these, and he looked *very*
thoroughly for drivers and/or programming information, and found
nothing. :-(

     -Dave

-- 
Dave McGuire
St. Petersburg, FL         "Less talk.  More synthohol." --Lt. Worf