FDDI or ATM in the home

BigEejit

I've got me hands a good lot of mostly old but working networking kit (including FDDI, ATM, Fiber channel, 1000BaseSX and even 4 port 100BaseT PCI cards), working pulls from a bunch of servers that were getting the boot, some of the gear had never even been used !!! :eek:
I'll probably flog most of it on ebay or something similar (unfortunately not here because no-one has made a decision about traders, and I know the second I'd try to flog it I'd be banned from the for-sale forum) but I will probably use some of the fiber gear myself, the FDDI and ATM gear wouldnt get much on the open market, so I'd be most interested in those myself (even though the Intel Gigabit boards would be 5 - 10 times faster) ... heh, even those 4 port ethernet boards have freeware port aggregate software to enable > 1.1Gbps in one direction, need a proper switch though
But I dont know if you can just stick a couple of ATM cards into PC's and connect them together ... in fact most of the old boards only have drivers available up to NT4 (but they all seem to have linux drivers in some shape or form)...

So the question is ... what the hell do you need to connect two pc's together with FDDI OR ATM? ..aside from fiber cables that is (nipped about 10 smart alec answers in the bud there ...whew :eek:) ... have to find some of them too ...:(
please dont tell me I need a switch, I just know that they would cost a small fortune, and she-who-must-be-obeyed would have a fit about it anyway :rolleyes:

po0k

Depends on the physical connectors and the hardware suroounding them.
ATM will run over copper, and I'm pretty sure FDDI would too, albeit with media converters.

Btw, the server kit, any more of it lying about?
PM me, I might be able to take some off your hands
Would be going towards a good cause: NUIG Computer society / GalwayLAN for example

po0k

Actually, the 4-port 100MBit PCI cards, I'd be really interested in one of those if you have a spare or two lying about.

dmd

What? why? why not use ethernet? It's not like there's no overhead on ATM or FDDi, and why use them? to use quake between your two boxes?

Jesus, stick with ethernet, or at least read up ATM for example, and see how pointless it would be to use it at home.

BigEejit

All the kit except the 4 port ethernet are fiber ...
ATM is a bit faster than 100Mbit ethernet ... (155MBit to be exact, also known as OC-3 or STM-1) the boards have an onboard processor, so quite low CPU resources .... Whats more important is that they have ranges up to 400meters (I think!, I have seen a site that reckons multimode with this card is capable of 2KM) using standard multimode SC-SC fiber cable or much farther with single mode cable

Dunno whats needed to use the FDDI boards (i.e. fiber switches or hubs etc)

po0k

Originally posted by BigEejit
All the kit except the 4 port ethernet are fiber ...
ATM is a bit faster than 100Mbit ethernet ... (155MBit to be exact, also known as OC-3 or STM-1) the boards have an onboard processor, so quite low CPU resources .... Whats more important is that they have ranges up to 400meters (I think!, I have seen a site that reckons multimode with this card is capable of 2KM) using standard multimode SC-SC fiber cable or much farther with single mode cable

Dunno whats needed to use the FDDI boards (i.e. fiber switches or hubs etc)

FDDI is like Token Ring on steroids.
It uses two concentric fibre loops with distributer nodes accessing them.
Official specs I've been able to find seem to mention 100MBit running speeds.
Afaik the overheads are quite low.
Used for Campus/Metropolitan are networks.

BigEejit

Anyone know where I could find antistatic bags cheap? .. have to be kind of big ... at least 40cm x 20cm (around 16" x 8" in old money) ... I'm looking for about 30 of them ...