Re: The Network from Heck ver 5.0

["Mark Cummings" <NOTfigjams@primus.com.au>]

I'm impressed that an 18 yo has an interest in Apple II's these days. Good
to see. I also started my Apple interest at about 18 years of age in my
bedroom at my parents house, but that was not long after the II+ was first
released. I probably spent the same money on a single Apple then as you did
for your 20 machines. (assuming they are recent of course)
I would hate to see how many you collect if you had your own place, maybe a
garage or a hanger would be more suiltable. :)
I'm starting to feel cluttered with about 10 machines set up and 3-4 bitsa's
spread over 3 rooms .
A network back then was just a group of friends you had. My monitor was a
crappy B/W Princess TV, which quickly got replaced by a home assembled green
screen monitor, with fully exposed wiring (yeech, if I only knew how
dangerous that was then)
As far as networking Apple goes now, I've just started using AppleTalk, and
found it to be great. Easy to install cabling, and very cheap. You only need
basic telephone wire and some RJ12's for longer runs. AppleTalk adaptors are
only $15AUD new and probably $5AUD or less second hand, so they are not much
of a cash outlay. I am getting about 100Kb/s (that's bits) throughput which
is pretty good, and certainly faster than using "swappys".
As far as HDD's go for a IIe, the cheapest option would be one of the Focus
60Mb or larger cards. They are easy to shuffle around between machines, work
on a IIe or IIGS. I like the idea of SCSI on the GS, so you can connect a
CD-ROM as well, but since I now have AppleTalk, I can use the CD-ROM on the
Mac through the network, so now I am thinking of skipping the CD for the GS.

Mark
Townsville, Oz


Simon Biber wrote in message ...
>Your networking feats amaze and inspire me.
>
>My networking efforts so far are fairly pitiful in comparison. I'm 18 and
>living with my family still, so my collection exists only within the bounds
>of my bedroom.
>
>The main house network consists of a hub with a cable modem and lines going
>under the floor to four rooms. Three of those -- my father's study and my
>two younger brothers' rooms just have a single PC in each.
>
>The cable that comes to my room is fed into the uplink port of my local hub
>which connects the computers in my room -- this Win2k PC (AMD Duron @ 800),
>a Linux PC (Cyrix 6x86
>@ 200) and a Mac IIsi (68030 @ 20).
>
>The Mac IIsi has a Localtalk connection to the LC 475 which has an Apple
IIe
>Card. Until I get a SCSI-Ethernet adaptor for that LC 475, it won't be on
>the 10BaseT... the IIe Card is more interesting.
>
>Stuff I want from your setup:
>
>- A couple of IIe Workstation cards
>
>- Lots of Appletalk cabling (I'm just using a straight minidin-8 to
>minidin-8 serial cable)
>
>- Two SCSI to Ethernet adapters (one for a Mac Plus, the other for an LC
475
>so I don't have to take out the Apple IIe Card)
>
>- a SCSI card and hard disk and 3.5" floppy drive and memory expansion for
>my IIgs so I can actually do some useful stuff with Appletalk or
>Marinetti -- and then a LanceGS would come in handy too.
>
>- MORE SPACE... my bedroom is nearly full with 20 computers
>
>Simon.
>
>> It has been some time since I updated my Network page.  I have no new
>> pictures, and no schematic, but, I have posted a wee epistle of my latest
>> assault on the innocent world of networks...  I hope it might prove
>> instructive to all not to start down the dread road of networking, for
>surely
>> 'twill lead to terrible things.
>>   See http://www.wvi.com/~barpri/net/nfh4.htm  for details of my woe and
>doom.
>>
>> -Bart
>>
>
>