Re: TCP adoption in 1984

" the Dorado, much better performance but expensive, "

Not to mention, noisy as hell. You almost couldn't have one in your office.
Or so I've heard.

On Mon, May 4, 2026 at 2:51 PM Bill Nowicki via Internet-history <
[email protected]> wrote:

>
> Yes indeed, I arrived at Stanford in September 1979, and the Computer
> Science department was just starting to move into Margaret Jacks Hall,
> named for the heir to "Monterey Jack" cheese, in newly renovated corner of
> the original quad. Up until then, the CS Department did not have a
> computer. If you wanted to research systems, you still had to do a
> dissertation in theory, AI, or numerical analysis. SAIL also moved down
> from the hill into the basement of Jacks hall. My office was on the fourth
> floor, where the Altos went. There was some planning done before then
> perhaps, maybe as early as 1978, especially arm twisting from Xerox to let
> us have them (even though PARC land was leased from the university). One
> justification was that Altos were already being replaced the "D" machines
> like the Dorado, much better performance but expensive, and the Dandelion,
> more reasonable cost with newer technology. All the Xerox gear including
> the file server (literally an Alto with disks) and the laser printer (one
> second per page, amazing performance!), also controlled by an Alto, used
> the 2.97 megabit per second experimental Ethernet exclusively. The original
> Sun Multibus card that Andy Bechtolscheim designed was also the
> experimental Ethernet, as well as the BSD Vaxes and the LSI-11 gateway
> running Noel Chiappa's code obtained by Jeff Mogul.
> By 1984, however, all the Sun Microsystems products used the standard DEC
> Intel Xerox (DIX) Ethernet using ARP.
> Bill    On Monday, May 4, 2026 at 07:36:35 AM PDT, Adam Sampson via
> Internet-history <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>  Noel Chiappa via Internet-history <[email protected]>
> writes:
>
> > Xerox gave a large donation of Altos and associated gear (most notably
> > 'Dover' laser printers) to MIT, Stanford and CMU; these all used only
> the 3MB
> > Ethernet. (I have been looking online for an original document which says
> > when this happened, but I can't find one. Some sources say it happened in
> > 1978 , but it might have dribbled over into early 1979.)
>
> It looks like late 1979 for SAIL. From Les Earnest's files:
>
> > SYSTEM MEETING                    7 March 1979
> > ...
> > Xerox:    Xerox is offering the Computer Science Department a Dover
> >         (high speed, high resolution XGP-like printer), an Ethernet,
> >         and some number of Altos - LES.
>
> > SYSTEM MEETING                    11 July 1979
> > ...
> > Dover:    Should arrive Sept.-Oct.  Comes with 16-18 Altos & file server.
>
> > SYSTEM MEETING                    6 September 1979
> > ...
> > Dover:    Due Oct.
>
> https://www.saildart.org/SYSTEM.MTG[D,LES]52
> (There are quite a few other references to the Dover, Altos and Ethernet
> under LES, so it's probably worth a grep through there...)
>
> --
> Adam Sampson <[email protected]>                        <http://offog.org/>
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