Why are new Suns thick Ethernet only

[j.mukerji]

In article <10217 at orstcs.CS.ORST.EDU> rudolf at oce.orst.edu (Jim Rudolf) writes:
>We were introduced to the new Sun products last week, and I was surprised
>to find that all new CPUs will only have thick Ethernet connectors.  OK, I
[...]
>Can anyone clue me in to the reason why Sun chose to go this way?
>I'm clueless.

I don't know the real reason, but I remember a conversation that I had
about a year ago with a Sun technical type. He had asked me "If Sun
decided to do away with either the thick Ethernet or the thin Ethernet
interface on their desktop boxes which would I be more comfortable with?".
My reply to him was, I would be more comfortable with a desktop Sun with
no thin Ethernet connector rather than no thick Ethernet connector,
because it is not possible to convert to a thick Ethernet connector from a
thin one, but vice-versa can be achieved by a little line-powered matchbox
device. 

We happen to use 10BaseT compliant Starlan 10 over twisted pair telephone
wiring in our network. In this setup each workstation is connected into
the building wiring using a little box called "AUI Adapter" which really
is a twisted pair transceiver that plugs directly into the thick Ethernet
connector, if you can figure out how to hold it there. In our setup we
tend to use a short segment of transceiver cable to hookup the AUI
adapters to workstations. Works like the charm.

Jishnu Mukerji, 
mtgzz!jis, jis at mtgzz.att.com
+1 201 957 5986
AT&T Bell Laboratories, MT 3K-423, 200 Laurel Ave., Middletown NJ 07748