Apollo stuff

[Jules Richardson]

On Wed, 2005-07-13 at 12:37 +0100, Simon Fryer wrote:
> The wall boxes are just fancy make before break connection boxes. The
> ring works fine without them.

That's good to hear :)

> > We're still short a Domain keyboard here, and I think we only have one
> > of the little interface cables that connects the network cabling to the
> > token ring card itself - hopefully there's nothing special to those
> > though and we can make something up. I'd just like to know if it's vital
> > to find the wall boxes though! :-)
> 
> Most of the Apollo range happily talk to a serial console so a
> screen/keyboard isn't really necessary. However in my not so humble
> opinion, I am yet to see anything that is anywhere near as nice as the
> GUI. .

Agreed! I haven't tested all our earlier Apollos yet anyway, so it's
possible that one might be beyond repair and so become a spare machine -
freeing up a keyboard (I've not tried an early-style Domain keyboard on
a later 4xx machine yet though; electrically they're compatible but I
don't know if the protocol's the same)

> From memory, they also boot happily across Ethernet. Although, 12Mb/s
> Token ring is far nicer then 10Mb/s CSMA/CD.

I've got a feeling that the earlier 3000-era machines don't have
Ethernet as standard anyway (although a card could be added, but I have
no idea what boards the OS would recognise). Using the ATR would seem
like the way to go to make a little domain, with one of the later 4xx
machines that also has an Ethernet interface being used to get to the
outside world. 

Memory's perhaps going to be a problem though - I think a couple of our
earlier machines are running rather short on RAM (and of course they're
proprietary modules) - 10.4's the only OS release we have, which might
not run on a memory-starved machine...

cheers

Jules