Re: AppleTalk (was: LocalTalk (was Small HDD))

On Sunday, Dec 21, 2003, at 18:59 US/Pacific, Nick Holland wrote:

> I don't believe Apple ever embraced the "Localtalk over flat wire" of 
> PhoneNet.  Apple's Localtalk was a shielded twisted pair.

Actually, around 1987 Apple began using PhoneNet for their own networks 
in-house, and not their own shielded twisted pair "AppleTalk" cabling.* 
  PhoneNet was cheaper and worked just fine.  By this time Farallon 
pretty much owned the "AppleTalk" cabling market (soon to be renamed 
"LocalTalk") with their "PhoneNet" product.

* Note:  Originally, "AppleTalk" was used to describe both the protocol 
and the networking hardware, including the cabling.  But sometime in 
the late 1980's the hardware component was renamed to "LocalTalk" while 
the protocol remained "AppleTalk."  This was done so that the protocol 
could become hardware independent (and thus opened the door to 
AppleTalk over EtherNet).


> HOWEVER OpenBSD does not support localtalk networking on the mac68k
> platform, the serial ports are just treated as, well, serial ports.

"LocalTalk" refers to the actual cables and the RS-432 serial ports; 
"AppleTalk" refers to the network protocol.  OpenBSD does not support 
AppleTalk networking, but does support the LocalTalk ports (as standard 
serial ports).

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