On Mon, 8 Feb 1999, Aaron J. Grier wrote:

> On Mon, Feb 08, 1999 at 02:36:49PM -0800, Jonathan Stone wrote:
> 
> > Actually, the best-suited hardware of all may be the DECstation 5000
> > series (except 200) and the Alpha 3000 series with the ioctl asic.
> > The ioasic has a DMA engine that can pump out an entire packet (up to
> > 4kbytes, aligned to end-of-page) with only one interrupt.  Same deal
> > with reception, tho' the driver may have to poll to find end-of-packet.

Nope. You have the 8530 set to interrupt when it sees the end of the
packet. :-)

> > The intersection of people who have the dec hardware, Mac hardware,
> > and interest in localtalk maybe empty, tho'.

You'd still need some extra hardware. You need to be able to deactivate
the line drivers. :-)

> It would still be a cool hack, though it's probably best left to
> machines with the actual hardware designed to deal with such a busted
> networking implementation.  (IE, macs.)

For the time it was a fine implimentation. :-) The mac was supposed to
cost in the $1k to $2k range. Ethernet cards cost about $1000 at the time,
which wouldn't make a lot of sense for Apple's target audience. LocalTalk
came in at about $100 per node, so it made sense. :-)

Take care,

Bill