[HECnet] FDDI advice

[Peter Lothberg]

I guess this is sort of on-topic, given I am talking about networking.

The Alpha 3000/800 I have contains a PMAF-FU card which is a DEC 
FDDIcontroller TURBOchannel card. It has a CAT 5 copper FDDI interface. 
I understand that it will support networking at 100MB.

It was called CDDI   (copper.... instead if fiber...)

I have no knowledge of FDDI. I believe that I would need a concentrator 
to make use of this connection, is there such a device which I could use 
to bridge the 3000/800 using FDDI to a standard ethernet network?

FDDI/CDDI is a dual ring token ring bus, with 4470 MTU byte packets,
it has 802.-- frames. DEC had a mode where you turned the token off
and used it for ptp full duplex.

There where converters that made Copper-to-Fiber conversion at L1 and
then you could plug in a normal FDDI hub/switch.

For example cisco/cabletron/crecendo had ethnernet switches with a
FDDI uplink, that you could use.

As a second question, I have a number of DEC/Compaq/HP PCI FDDI cards 
which were given to me. They have optical connectors. If I were to make 
use of these would I need another concentrator, or is there a box which 
will support both media with plug in modules, for example.

Cabletron made such thing... 

But you need nothing to build a FDDI ring, its a A and a B ring, you
can just plug the cards together with fiber-patch-cables.

-P





Thanks for the help,

Mark.

-- 
      http://www.wickensonline.co.uk
      http://hecnet.eu
      http://declegacy.org.uk
      http://retrochallenge.net
      https://twitter.com/#!/%40urbancamo