NeXT Thin Ethernet with Termination

Hi.

Does anyone have some photos of the thin ethernet connecting to the back of a cube/station.

It was a little T junction and you either route another cable on the other side of the T or put a terminator on it. What was great about it was, you didnt need a line running from a central hub to each device, but could go from device to device and just terminate the end.

I cannot find any photos of it. I used to have tons of the stuff but am afraid I lost it over the years.

Thanks for any pointers/help.

I assume youu need a picture of one attached specifically to a cube or station?

It's ok if it's not attached, but if one is attached, that's even better. If I recall, NeXT used to have an "official" EPS clip art collection of all their products and that was in there too. Hmm, does anyone know if that's stored in one of our archives?

LOL, I found it in my personal archive:

Sadly we cannot attach photos in this forum. Only links to photos. Shame.

Quote from: zombie on July 27, 2022, 08:03:13 PMIt's ok if it's not attached, but if one is attached, that's even better. If I recall, NeXT used to have an "official" EPS clip art collection of all their products and that was in there too. Hmm, does anyone know if that's stored in one of our archives?

LOL, I found it in my personal archive:

Sadly we cannot attach photos in this forum. Only links to photos. Shame.

You can attach photos by selecting "Preview" on the lower right of the Quick Reply window, then select "Attachments and other options". It's unfortunate that the Quick Reply window is missing the Attachments menu.

Here is an image of what it looked like. The cable used to come on a  big spool. Also the terminator was prettier. It looked a bit like the megapixel monitor feet. A bit ribbed.

Are you saying that NeXT had their own custom designed version of the BNC "T" adapters and terminators?
Why does that not surprise me, as they had their own branded power cables.

https://groups.google.com/g/comp.sys.next.marketplace/c/NR5G7IQMHzM/m/w4p-LvmsmbgJ

Quote from: zombie on July 27, 2022, 04:05:39 PMWhat was great about it was, you didnt need a line running from a central hub to each device, but could go from device to device and just terminate the end.

Of course this was also what was terrible about it.   ;D

Depends on your application. Think about a wire harness in a car. It adds incredible weight and complexity having a hub/spoke design. By just having a single line, you literally reduce the weight of the car by over a hundred pounds.

The McLaren Artura is one of the first cars to take on this design.

It was a real PITA when one machine on the loop had a NIC that would flake out and flood everyone off the network, or someone decided for some reason to move a machine and forgot to connect things back together.  Many a time walking from office to office or calling people to try and narrow down where the problem was.

Very true. No doubt, for modern applications in offices/homes, the current hub/spoke model is better. But there are a few applications where that old model is still better. The car/plane application where you want to reduce weight. Impromptu LAN parties!

Also, one of the things you could do with a termination model like that today is, if you use fiber optics, you don't have just a single line. You could easily put 10 fiberoptic threads in less than the thickness weight of a single copper line. So you could have an optic coupler that reads any one of the 10 lines for redundancy, so even if one fails you have the others carrying over for redundancy.

But still a bit like Christmas tree lights with regard to really big/bad intermediary failures.

Also, granted, way more niche applications.

Fine for a small home LAN with elderly computers. I have a NeXTComputer cube, a Sun SPARCstation IPC and a couple of SGI Indigos networked together with 10B-2, and an old CentreCom hub that has a 10B-2 BNC connector (in addition to 10B-T) to bring them into the rest of the house LAN...fun to have more of the older tech around (but vastly easier than dealing with ThickNet!).

Quote from: mikeboss on July 28, 2022, 03:29:59 PM

Hah!  That's from my old nextstuff.info site.  Which... atrophied and I let the domain expire.  But I just got it back because of this post :)

Now to actually get the content back up...

And yes, I happen to have one.

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Quote from: pergamon on August 29, 2022, 10:58:03 PMHah!  That's from my old nextstuff.info site.  Which... atrophied and I let the domain expire.  But I just got it back because of this post :)

Now to actually get the content back up...

luckily, I made a backup when it was still online ;-)

Wow, that's so cool -- I never knew about this!