[TenTec] Why Ethernet?

[Bill Fuqua]

	Just got back into town and noticed this thread.
I am involved in the design of instruments for physics research.
And one problem that we have encountered is the rapid change in computer 
technology making instruments that are perfectly suited for the job no 
longer useful with the newer computers.  In the 1980's is seemed that the 
standard was "S100". Before the PC's really hit the market big time. So we 
designed some instruments to fit onto S100 boards. We also used parallel 
interfaces in some instruments and serial in others.
	Then comes along the PCs. Well we could still use the parallel interfaces 
and serial interfaces but the S100 stuff  had to be trashed. The people 
actually doing  the  programming  (professors and graduate students) did 
understand BASIC and could write and modify their own programs. This is 
perfect because having a single programmer to funnel all this thru would be 
a serious problem and the graduate students would not gain the experience 
either.
	We had to decide where to go from here. The problem is that the parallel 
interfaces have gone, serial interfaces (rs232) to more than one instrument 
is a real problem using the new computers due to operating systems and 
visual basic etc....
What interface is most likely to survive for the next 10 years or so?  USB 
has already  been upgraded and firewire taking its place and then something 
else and something else etc....
	But ether net is likely to be around for some time due to the fact that 
many buildings are wired for it and the owners of those buildings are not 
likely to want to rewire them for some time.  Also, for about $50 each 
((unit quantities from Lantronix) an OEM interface just a little larger 
than an ether net connector behaves like a nano-server and contains a micro 
controller that you can program to interface to your instrument and the 
nanoserver can be set up to look just like webpage (buttons and everything) 
with HTML etc. This way a person can control an instrument from any 
computer without special software.
      	I suspect that equipment manufacturers all over are facing a similar 
problem and will be going to ether net.

73
Bill wa4lav