FDDI, was: Re: [rescue] u2 drive trays

[Dave McGuire]

On Tuesday, August 19, 2003, at 01:52 PM, Curtis H. Wilbar Jr. wrote:
> I see you can get blades for the Cisco 1400 that have MIC
> ports, ST ports, and CDDI ports.... sooo....
>
> 1. Which are the "standard ports for conneting to hosts" ?  MIC, right 
> ?

   Most older cards have MIC connectors, most newer (and nearly all PCI 
cards) have SC (not ST).  FDDI on ST connectors is fairly rare...some 
VME interfaces and DEC DEFTA/DEFZA cards have ST connectors, but 
nothing else that I've seen.

   DEFPA cards have SC connectors, as do most SysKonnect cards (and all 
recent/current ones).  Older Sbus cards have MIC, newer ones have SC.

   SC<->MIC cables are common on eBay, so if you get a WS-C1400 with MIC 
ports you're still ok...you just get lower port density on the 
concentrator.  I'd avoid ST...they're fragile and not that easy to find 
cheaply.  Only use it when you absolutely have to...like if you have a 
TurboChannel machine with a DEFTA, then just get an ST<->MIC cable to 
connect to your concentrator.

> 2. Can CDDI run over CAT5, if so, anyone know which length ?  How hard 
> is
>    it to get CDDI cards (I think I have a CDDI sbus card kicking 
> around that
>    came in a used Sparc I aquired) ?  Is it just as good (CDDI) ???

   Talk to James Sharp <jsharp at psychoses.org> about CDDI if you don't 
get answers here.  He's done a lot with it.  I've not done anything 
with CDDI so I can't help you there.

> Does Cisco have something like the 1400 that has an ethernet port, or 
> am
> I going to need to get a Catalyst switch with a FDDI uplink ?

   You need a switch.  It takes serious smarts to bridge between 
Ethernet and FDDI.

   If all you need is 10Mbit ethernet, the WS-C1200 family of switches 
have a FDDI uplink, perform well, are small (2U), and can be had very 
cheaply.

         -Dave

--
Dave McGuire                 "You don't have Vaseline in Canada?"
St. Petersburg, FL                     -Bill Bradford