Simple peer to peer network?

[Sean Conner]

It was thus said that the Great Jim Brain once stated:
> Sellam wants to finish the 64 c64 cluster for the next VCF.  I've been 
> researching ideas for communicating among the machines, and the best 
> ideas point to using the two synchronous serial ports on the user port 
> (low wire count, transfers at 250kbps).
> 
> But, I have grawn a complete blank on plans for a true peer to peer 
> (token based or otherwise) networking protocol.  Everything I see is 
> master/slave.  RS485 material talks about the hardware layer, but there 
> is no detail on the protocol layer. 
>
> I would think this would be a well researched and innovated area, low 
> speed communication without a master node.  Anyone have any pointers for 
> things to look into?

  Each computer has two serial connections.  Can you send and receive on a
single "port" at the same time?  Can you send and receive on both "ports" at
the same time?  The design of the protocol depends somewhat upon the
capabilities of the ports.  If you can't, then you might want something like
token ring, where a "transmit" token is passed around, and any computer with
the "token" can transmit.  If you can send/receive without problems on
either port, then just let the computers transmit at will.

  About the only real problem to come up is configuration---how does each
computer get its address on the network?  Manual configuration?  Automatic?  

  -spc (You might want to look at how AppleTalk works ... it's pretty neat
	how it works ... )