Charles Mills wrote:
Price and also simplicity of implementation.
Price is especially significant when people are tip-toeing into something
not sure if they are going to like it - that was the case with VHS and Beta.
"I'll get one of these cheap VHS VCRs, and if I like it, I'll get a good
Beta later." Of course, once they had a library of VHS tapes, "later" never
came.
I don't know VHS-Beta war, but in times of early LANs a cost of TR
adapter was approx. $800, while Novell NE2000 was less than $100. That's
the difference. For *small* networks both standards were OK.
Additionally Eth didn't need any additional box, while TR required MAU.
Hint: it was ethernet over coaxial cable - no repeater/hub needed
(switch was not born yet).
Novell bought Eagle company just to produce cheap networking cards. To
make LAN available for everyone. They did the revolution.
In the best years Novell had approx. 70% of file server marketshare (and
over 90% in Poland).
--
Radoslaw Skorupka
Lodz, Poland
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