On Apr 4, 2010, at 11:29 47PM, Jorge Amodio wrote:
>> The N connectors were easier to deal with than the vampire taps. To add
>> a node, you just "spliced" a new xceiver box onto the line where you
>> needed it by screwing a new length of cable into the new + existng
>> xceivers, then connecting the AUI drop cable from the box to the node.
>
> I've to say it, the AUI cables were an absolute pain in the ass to deal with.
>
> We had also a thick coax with the vampire taps and AUI fan outs from
> Excellan. Dealing with the coax was not that bad since we made an
> inverted U and had a coax run on each of the two vertical raisers this
> particular building had.
>
> The biggest challenge was to go from the raiser using the existing
> horizontal conduits that were not that big, and run the AUI from the
> XCVR to the fanout unit and then from that unit to each desk.
>
> Before going to 10BaseT we used pre-standard LattisNet from SynOptics,
> getting rid of the AUI was a relief.
>
Oh, the thick coax and the AUIs were lots of fun. The 15-ping cables from the
hosts to the AUIs were always coming loose, and the slide locks didn't help
much. The vampire taps tended to either not make good enough contact or to
break the center conductor. The N-connectors were easier to handle -- but
cutting the cable and crimping on a pair took down the whole network.
And then there was the time an electrician accidentally cut the coax and
decided to splice it with black electrical tape...
--Steve Bellovin, http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb
