Jonathan Hunter wrote in a message to All:
 JH> I've got three Arcnet cards (SMC) lying around here, that
 JH> I'm itching to play with - just for fun :-)
You must be easily entertained.
 JH> What kind of cabling do they need? The physical connection
 JH> on the cards themselves are BNC plugs (exactly the same as
 JH> 10Base-2), but I have heard that they need 100 ohm cable or
 JH> something similar??
 JH> Would standard RG/58U cable work, or is this not a good idea? 
Officially, you should use RG-62, which is 93 ohms.  Unlike Ethernet, ARCnet 
is amazingly tolerant stuff, and RG-59 at 75 ohms or RG-58 at 50 ohms would 
work if you did not run too much distance.
 JH> I also remember somebody in here (I think it was Mike???) 
 JH> saying that "Arcnet will run over anything, even barbed wire!". 
 JH> I realise this was only a jokey example and not meant to be 
 JH> gospel truth, but does this mean I can use "sub-standard" cable 
 JH> when wiring up my 'development' network segment? 
I don't recall saying precisely those words, but I may have.  There is a fair 
amount of truth to this, and ARCnet is not picky.
 JH> What are the worst consequences of using the wrong kind of 
 JH> cable with these network cards? Presumably they will simply not 
 JH> work, and I can't actually do them much permanent damage...?
No, you certainly can't do any damage.  The worst problem is that the LAN 
would not work at all.  Another possibility is that you will create standing 
waves on the wire because of the impedance discontinuities, and this will 
allow you to hear some stations but not others.  The most likely possibility 
is that you will have power loss on the wire, which will reduce your 
stance.
 JH> Oh, and if anybody's interested ;-) I am planning on putting 
 JH> one in my Linux box, and routing TCP/IP and IPX over them. I've 
 JH> got an IPX driver that came on a disk with one of the cards, 
 JH> and I assume there are packet drivers available for Arcnet.
Most ARCnet cards are actually hardware compatible.  There is good support 
for ARCnet in Linux: I've used it, and I've been involved in the development. 
 The principal author, Avery Pennarun, has a Linux ARCnet web site:
   http://www.foxnet.net/~apenwarr/arcnet/
Avery's page has tons of information, including the new Packet Drivers you 
need to run on faster CPUs, the Novell ARCnet drivers, and a pointer to the 
mailing list out of Poland.  In most standard Linux distributions, ARCnet is 
an installable module.
I'm something of the expert on running Samba over ARCnet.  I dived into this 
because a local Catholic high school received a donation of a whole network 
of machines with ARCnet cards already installed.  You need to configure the 
arc0e pseudo-device which piggybacks on the arc0 device, but it does work 
solidly.
 
-- Mike
--- 
---------------