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From: brad@kontron.UUCP (Brad Yearwood)
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.lans
Subject: Re: Smart Ethernet boards (now Excelan 205T for IBM-PC)
Message-ID: <1717@kontron.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 13-Jul-87 19:22:32 EDT
Article-I.D.: kontron.1717
Posted: Mon Jul 13 19:22:32 1987
Date-Received: Wed, 15-Jul-87 02:36:28 EDT
References: <283@sering.cwi.nl> <8212@utzoo.UUCP>
Organization: Kontron Electronics, Mt. View, CA
Lines: 38

> I believe that Excelan has released a new version of the smart card which
> The thick-and-thin version is called the EXOS-205T. I don't know anything
> about the pricing, though...
> 				- john romkey

They're $100 more than the old boards, which means about $895 raw or with
NETBIOS, $1095 with FTP and TELNET, $1175 with FTP, TELNET, and NETBIOS,
$1395 with FTP, TELNET, NETBIOS, and socket programming library.

I've had 3 of the 205T boards here for several weeks now.  They are installed
on a small Ethernet (mixed thick and thin), with thoroughly bashed and abused
coax cable, and seem to talk just fine to each other and to everything
else we have, using both thinwire and standard transceivers connections.

Good features:

  Thinwire: no transceiver or multi-port needed, save $200 per node for
  small installations (less in cases where you have enough nodes in clusters
  to use multiport transceivers).

  Cutaway area on front edge of board makes installation reasonably simple,
  even with the awkward BNC connector in back.

  Runs fine on 10MHz bus here, has supposedly been tested past 12MHz.

Yucky stuff:

  T-connector for thinwire can be awkward to position if you have lots of
  other cables on the PC back panel.  (This problem is not unique to Excelan,
  it is a consequence of the PC back panel mechanics and electrical necessity.)

  Thinwire vs. thickwire selection is done by moving 7 nitty little
  jumpers, instead of a more convenient strap pack.  But you only have
  to do this rarely, so big deal.

Brad Yearwood
Kontron Electronics  {voder, pyramid}!kontron!brad
Mountain View, California