Delete comment from: Ken Shirriff's blog
Yes! Now all I have to do is find a spare Xerox Alto, build an Ethernet bridge, and port Crysis to it for instant fame!
Thanks for this article, the original Alto restoration felt like a only week ago, now your little Alto has grown up and can network boot among other things. You had talked about the bridge before, and it was talked about in Marc's videos, so I wondered when you would explain it. Which you did, this is a great example of the process of building an interface between modern and vintage/retro hardware. Its weird to think that the BeagleBone there has more computing power than the Alto, or even larger computers from the time.
I had a question a few months back about the Ethernet that I figured out now. The original Ethernet was designed to connect a "pool" of computers in Xerox's facilities, which is why they went with the dreaded vampire tap solution. Glad I have thin-wires and easy-insertion sockets on modern Ethernet, or better yet, Wifi!!
Jan 9, 2018, 5:25:39 PM
Posted to Xerox Alto's 3 Mb/s Ethernet: Building a gateway with a BeagleBone