On Mon, Dec 13, 2021 at 3:09 PM Grant Taylor via cctalk <cctalk@classiccmp.org> wrote: > On 12/12/21 10:28 PM, Ethan Dicks via cctalk wrote: > > I haven't used ARCnet since we used to use it for 4-player Doom > > (especially since not everyone in the gaming group had Ethernet at > > home yet and it was easy to make a passive 4-port ARCnet hub. > > I find this statement interesting for a couple of different reasons: > > 1) Paying Doom over ARCnet. -- I don't think I realized that ARCnet > was standardized enough that normal networking applications would work > over it. -- Naivety on my part.
The Doom application contained a network stack that would handle the higher layers. IIRC, you still had to load a packet driver shim, but perhaps not. It's been a loooong time since I've done it. But you definitely could play up to 4 players when each machine had an ARCnet card. Ethernet cards worked too but they cost a lot more at the time. > 2) "it was easy to make a passive 4-port ARCnet hub" ... I don't know > how to respond to that with anything but curiosity and /many/ open ended > questions. https://apenwarr.ca/arcnet/howto/cabling.html You just take 4 BNCs and 4 resistors. Tie all the grounds together (can use a metal bar or wire or whatever) and connect one resistor to each core and tie all 4 resistors together. In other words, ARCnet supports a Star topology that Ethernet does not. It's a token-passing scheme, not CSMA (collision detection). Cheers, -ethan > > > > -- > Grant. . . . > unix || die