OLD computer networking?

Hi Everyone,
Silly question: what was the networking protocols in the 1960's and 1970's, you know, main frame computers and at NASA and whatnot. The kind of stuff you would see in the background of a JJ Abrams movie (or Fringe, or Lost, etc).

Just wondering.

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thegoodbye

Check out these articles:

ARPAnet - The First Internet
ARPANET - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Transmission Control Protocol - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

paul78

Those articles don't really describe early telecommunications.

A lot of mainframes and university campus computers used terminals which are serial based.

When early microcomputers came out, think IBM PC XT or Apple Mac, small LANs actually used serial connections that daisy chained. As IP started to become popular, then came coax based tokenring, arcnet, and ethernet. If you think running UTP was a pain, try running coxaxial.

wes allen

DECNet and SNA?

wes allen

paul78 wrote: »

When early microcomputers came out, think IBM PC XT or Apple Mac, small LANs actually used serial connections that daisy chained. As IP started to become popular, then came coax based tokenring, arcnet, and ethernet. If you think running UTP was a pain, try running coxaxial.

Usually those older networks ran IPX, Appletalk, and seems like there was one more in there at L3 before IP took off. Localtalk is the apple serial L2, used phone line and dongles to chain machines. My first network was two 286's connected serially useing LANtastic.

As a PS, a lot of Tokenring was a physical STP star. MAU's and such.

TheShadow

wes allen wrote: »

DECNet and SNA?

Those were the two main ones, it really depended on whose mainframe you had; not many standards back then. SNA was introduced by IBM in 1974 and killed most to the propriety ones used by Burroughs, Control Data, Honeywell et. al. DECNet hung on and Apple did the cheap (hardware wise) Apple-talk.

As people moved off of mainframes other connection types came with Ethernet being the eventual winner. I had a SNA adapter in my original IBM-AT when IBM thought they could keep them as smart terminals. Most mainframe attachments however were via leased telephone lines to teletypes, glass teletypes (CRTs), bank teller machines (paper bank books) etc. In the pre PC era only 10 percent of companies had any type of computing power with it farmed out to data centers. IBM introduced Token-ring to compete with DECNet.

Datapoint, the dedicated word processing company, also had a competing network system that was popular with early CP/M based PCs. The U.S. government had quite an investment with that but Datapoint died with the rise of Wordstar and Wordperfect.

JamesEubank

I think all these information is available at Wikipedia, Now a days trend is towards the new technologies, so I think history guide you better than any person...

petedude

TheShadow wrote: »

IBM introduced Token-ring to compete with DECNet.

Datapoint, the dedicated word processing company, also had a competing network system that was popular with early CP/M based PCs. The U.S. government had quite an investment with that but Datapoint died with the rise of Wordstar and Wordperfect.

Wow, ancient memories. When 900 years old you are, network as good you will not.

I remember Token Ring. All it took was to put a station with a weak cable, and you'd be beaconing. . . basically flooding a segment with status messages to where it the seqment would shut down. Lovely.

Datapoint-- I don't remember seeing Arcnet on CP/M PCs, but I do remember seeing it on proprietary Datapoint equipment as well as early IBM-compatible PCs. Novell had a nice niche business in setting up NetWare for Arcnet initially. You'd be surprised, but you can still buy Arcnet adapters. I'm pretty sure I've even seen PCI ones for sale!

About7Narwhal

petedude wrote: »

I'm pretty sure I've even seen PCI ones for sale!

ARCNET Products

paul78

wes allen wrote: »

My first network was two 286's connected serially useing LANtastic.

I forgot about LANtastic. That was a great product. I was trying to remember the serial RS232 based ones. It didn't require extra cards and used the built in DB25 RS232 interface and ran on DOS. It was similar to the later DOS 6 Interlink feature.

petedude

paul78 wrote: »

I forgot about LANtastic. That was a great product. I was trying to remember the serial RS232 based ones. It didn't require extra cards and used the built in DB25 RS232 interface and ran on DOS. It was similar to the later DOS 6 Interlink feature.

I supported a 10BaseT Lantastic network briefly once. It was interesting trying to integrate that with a NetWare LAN.

The Lantastic serial deal makes me think of the DOS 6 serial transfer utilities as well as. . . Laplink of all things.

Node Man

I love this thread, and technology history in general

JDMurray

Sites I often reference when arguing with the (failing) memories of other old timers:

Welcome to OLD-COMPUTERS.COM !

Old Computers - rare, vintage, and obsolete computers

Timeline of computing - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Node Man

JDMurray wrote: »

Sites I often reference when arguing with the (failing) memories of other old timers:

Welcome to OLD-COMPUTERS.COM !

Old Computers - rare, vintage, and obsolete computers

Timeline of computing - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Awesome, thank you!