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This is a wonderful project! I'm old enough to remember the days when Ethernet adapters for commercial computers were made of individual logic gates. The Ethern

This is a wonderful project! I'm old enough to remember the days when Ethernet adapters for commercial computers were made of individual logic gates. The Ethernet adapter in the VAX 11/750 I used in the early 80's was two large Unibus boards full of TTL logic: http://gunkies.org/wiki/Digital_Ethernet_UNIBUS_Network_Adapter http://gunkies.org/wiki/Digital_Ethernet_UNIBUS_Network_Adap...

aswanson 4y ago
That is crazy, the amount of space a network adapter took up.
- db48x 4y ago
  And there were a few more boards for the disk controller, and another couple for the display controller…
  - greenyoda 4y ago
    Not to mention all the boards that the CPUs and RAM took up. Here's a nice photo of the insides of a VAX 11/780 - if you enlarge it all the way you can see the annotations showing which boards do what: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ec/SPEC-1_VAX_05.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ec/SPEC-1_V... Note that those 16 huge memory boards each held 256K (kilobytes!) for a total of 4M of RAM. Photo with people to show size of cabinets: https://photovault.com/363660 https://photovault.com/363660
    - db48x 4y ago
      It’s always surprising to look back at these things, because it hardly seems like it would be economical to build and deliver such a huge monstrosity.
      - aswanson 4y ago
        When the alternative is nothing or paying a lot of money for something you need to make a lot of money, people will pay a lot of money. It still crazy though. The 80s don't seem that long ago.
- rasz 4y ago
  First PC network card was only slightly smaller :) 3Com 10Mbps Ethernet 3C500 aka IBM Ethernet (IE) aka EtherLink from October 1982 https://static.wixstatic.com/media/a03cac_005e3e9eb62b47c29265cb94a99f68aa~mv2_d_3264_2448_s_4_2.jpg/v1/fill/w_3264,h_2448,fp_0.50_0.50,q_90/a03cac_005e3e9eb62b47c29265cb94a99f68aa~mv2_d_3264_2448_s_4_2.jpg https://static.wixstatic.com/media/a03cac_005e3e9eb62b47c292...
Gordonjcp 4y ago
The one that superseded that, the DELUA adaptor, was powered by a 68000 CPU that was generally faster than the machine hosting it :-D
tyingq 4y ago
This blog post dives into another mostly TTL logic Ethernet board from the Xerox Alto: https://www.righto.com/2017/11/fixing-ethernet-board-from-vintage.html https://www.righto.com/2017/11/fixing-ethernet-board-from-vi... It has a nice high level diagram of what each group of TTL chips is doing too: https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-DpUyda3g2Yk/WgB7G_7o54I/AAAAAAABF-w/NOmnZtT-MooUpJBJ7PajB52coZerf8NWwCHMYBhgL/w9999/board-labeled.png https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-DpUyda3g2Yk/WgB7G_7o54I/A...

aswanson 4y ago

That is crazy, the amount of space a network adapter took up.

db48x 4y ago
And there were a few more boards for the disk controller, and another couple for the display controller…
- greenyoda 4y ago
  Not to mention all the boards that the CPUs and RAM took up. Here's a nice photo of the insides of a VAX 11/780 - if you enlarge it all the way you can see the annotations showing which boards do what: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ec/SPEC-1_VAX_05.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ec/SPEC-1_V... Note that those 16 huge memory boards each held 256K (kilobytes!) for a total of 4M of RAM. Photo with people to show size of cabinets: https://photovault.com/363660 https://photovault.com/363660
  - db48x 4y ago
    It’s always surprising to look back at these things, because it hardly seems like it would be economical to build and deliver such a huge monstrosity.
    - aswanson 4y ago
      When the alternative is nothing or paying a lot of money for something you need to make a lot of money, people will pay a lot of money. It still crazy though. The 80s don't seem that long ago.
rasz 4y ago
First PC network card was only slightly smaller :) 3Com 10Mbps Ethernet 3C500 aka IBM Ethernet (IE) aka EtherLink from October 1982 https://static.wixstatic.com/media/a03cac_005e3e9eb62b47c29265cb94a99f68aa~mv2_d_3264_2448_s_4_2.jpg/v1/fill/w_3264,h_2448,fp_0.50_0.50,q_90/a03cac_005e3e9eb62b47c29265cb94a99f68aa~mv2_d_3264_2448_s_4_2.jpg https://static.wixstatic.com/media/a03cac_005e3e9eb62b47c292...

Gordonjcp 4y ago

The one that superseded that, the DELUA adaptor, was powered by a 68000 CPU that was generally faster than the machine hosting it :-D

tyingq 4y ago

This blog post dives into another mostly TTL logic Ethernet board from the Xerox Alto: https://www.righto.com/2017/11/fixing-ethernet-board-from-vintage.html https://www.righto.com/2017/11/fixing-ethernet-board-from-vi... It has a nice high level diagram of what each group of TTL chips is doing too: https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-DpUyda3g2Yk/WgB7G_7o54I/AAAAAAABF-w/NOmnZtT-MooUpJBJ7PajB52coZerf8NWwCHMYBhgL/w9999/board-labeled.png https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-DpUyda3g2Yk/WgB7G_7o54I/A...