CompuServe Messages

:::It is becoming very cheap to add Ethernet boards to most computers now, at least Amigas and clones, dunno about Macs. I think Ethernet on a Mac starts at around $500 or so, I don't know whether you consider that "very cheap," though. Interestingly, there are some external Ethernet controllers that can be put on the low-end (slotless) Macs – they run off the SCSI port. :::But you don't see people making hard disks run on the serial port, now, do you? Funny thing – the OLD Macs (1984, 1985, before the Mac Plus) had no SCSI ports, and while some hard drives attached through their external floppy port, many attached through one of their serial ports! Mac serial ports (RS-422, an RS-232 superset) are fast (the Appletalk network uses one of those ports at a 230k baud rate, over 20x faster than 9600 baud, and the port is technically capable of speed about 4x greater than that if the device is "externally clocked"). Like the Amiga, the serial ports are regularly used for MIDI as well. The serial hard drives used to have "intelligent pass through" connectors so you wouldn't lose the ability to use the serial port for another device. Luckily, those hard drives died out when the Macs started coming with SCSI ports. You couldn't boot from them (they'd use the equivalent of a "kickstart" floppy), you couldn't daisy-chain them, and, although certainly a lot faster than a floppy, these were by no means fast devices by today's standards. ===Scott