On 14 September 2016 at 18:15, tony duell <a...@p850ug1.demon.co.uk> wrote: >> > * LittleBigLAN (never heard of or saw) >> > * The $25 Network (never heard of or saw) >> >> Odd... They were sold in the UK as being American imports... > > Dare I suggest that perhaps they flopped in the states so they > tried to flog them to us :-)
I share your cynicism in general on that point, but this was sold for _years_ by, IIRC, a little company called EQ Consultants, IIRC. http://eqc.co.uk/ It was definitely a thing when Ethernet was still too expensive. Here's a mini-review: http://www.atarimagazines.com/compute/issue142/70_Getting_wired.php > I've never seen it in operation, but the Gemini > Galaxy (somewhat based on the Nascom, with > the same bus) had a network option. It was a little > board that hung off the parallel connector on the > CPU board. The one I have had had all the numbers > scratched off the ICs, it took me about 2 minutes > to realise that the main 40 pin IC was a dumb > UART. The rest of the board was a bit of logic > to interface it to the parallel port, a clock > generator and RS485 buffers. Interesting. I heard of it, certainly, but I never knew of anyone who actually used it. > Of course the common network in UK schools > in the early 80s was Econet (Acorn's network > for the BBC micro, Atom, etc). I saw quite a few decommissioned machines with Econet adaptors, and I've seen a demo network set up at a show in the last decade I think, but I don't think I ever saw one in action. I did see IEE-488 in use, both on CBM PETs and BBC Micros, in education -- both for storage and for connecting to lab equipment. -- Liam Proven • Profile: http://lproven.livejournal.com/profile Email: lpro...@cix.co.uk • GMail/G+/Twitter/Flickr/Facebook: lproven MSN: lpro...@hotmail.com • Skype/AIM/Yahoo/LinkedIn: liamproven Cell/Mobiles: +44 7939-087884 (UK) • +420 702 829 053 (ČR)
