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From: izumi@violet.berkeley.edu (Izumi Ohzawa)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next
Subject: Re: that darn ethernet question again...
Keywords: ethernet
Message-ID: <1990Oct17.114557.24169@agate.berkeley.edu>
Date: 17 Oct 90 11:45:57 GMT
References: <1990Oct14.063939.13655@midway.uchicago.edu> <1990Oct15.172148.9691@nntp-server.caltech.edu> <1990Oct17.060749.25879@watserv1.waterloo.edu>
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In article <1990Oct17.060749.25879@watserv1.waterloo.edu> croehrig@audiolab.UWaterloo.ca (Chris J. Roehrig) writes:
>A cheap way to connect to thick ethernet is through a gateway. This isn't
>as expensive as it sounds.  We have an old door-stop PC XT clone with
>two Western Digital cards (WD8003E Ethercard Plus, $250 CDN each; you should
>be able to get them for under $200 (US$)) running Vance Morrison's PCRoute 
>(available via ftp from accuvax.nwu.edu in pub/pcroute).

[stuff deleted]

>So if you have a thick-wire drop and a PC lying around (we got ours free
>from CS labs who are unloading truckloads of them), the total cost is 
>$400-$500 and you have your own thinwire subnet. (And as an extra bonus, 
>you don't have your network administrator screaming at you for mucking
>about on his net :-) )

Let me add a few points.

If you want to put NeXTs onto the same subnet as the thick-net portion,
you can use the
same hardware as described above, and run "PCbridge" by Vance Morrison.
This is a companion to "PCRoute" and is available from the same host
by anonymous FTP (see above).

If there are a Thicknet drop (blue cable with DB15 connector) already
in the room and a free PC, you can connect MULTIPLE NeXTs to the
network essentially for the cost of a single-port repeater (maybe less).

The doc for PCbridge says that it does packet filtering too so that
the local traffic on Thin-net and Thick-net won't be forwarded
across the bridge.

We've been running this bridge setup for over 6 months using a 4.7MHz
PC with no monitor.  I am very happy with it's performance and
reliability.  I haven't touched this box for months.

Izumi Ohzawa, izumi@violet.berkeley.edu