Date   : Tue, 06 Nov 1990 21:11:35 GMT
From   : bu.edu!shelby!helens!news@bloom-beacon.mit.edu (news)
Subject: Early microcomputer networks

Back in the late 70's and early 80's, the Physics department at
Washington University (St. Louis) had a primitive (by today's
standards) network of 8 to 10 diskless PDP-11's running a modified
RT-11 hanging off of a dedicated PDP-11 disk server.  Each client had
it's own coax link to the server.  (Good thing they had separate lines
too, since nearly every thunderstorm blew the transceiver chips at
both ends of the long line out to the cyclotron building.)

Around 1980, with the proliferation of micros like the Apple II and
S-100 CPM boxes, the architect of the system, Prof. Scandrett,
extended the network so that micros could all share the same cable.

He had it working on the Apple II's.  In 1981, I hacked up CPM's BIOS
to make the disk server look like a (rather large) CPM drive.

Disk storage (other than floppies) was quite expensive at the time, so
I'm sure there were similar ad-hoc networks elsewhere.  Everyone knows
about ethernet, which was by then, I believe, common at most large
universities.  But what about networks that became extinct, the
network dinosaurs?  What was happening with other mini/microcomputer
networks around that time?

Jim Helman
Department of Applied Physics                  Durand 012
Stanford University                            FAX: (415) 725-3377
(jim@KAOS.stanford.edu)                        Work: (415) 723-9127