[HECnet] FDDI advice

I guess this is sort of on-topic, given I am talking about networking. The Alpha 3000/800 I have contains a PMAF-FU card which is a DEC FDDIcontroller TURBOchannel card. It has a CAT 5 copper FDDI interface. I understand that it will support networking at 100MB. It was called CDDI (copper.... instead if fiber...) I have no knowledge of FDDI. I believe that I would need a concentrator to make use of this connection, is there such a device which I could use to bridge the 3000/800 using FDDI to a standard ethernet network? FDDI/CDDI is a dual ring token ring bus, with 4470 MTU byte packets, it has 802.-- frames. DEC had a mode where you turned the token off and used it for ptp full duplex. There where converters that made Copper-to-Fiber conversion at L1 and then you could plug in a normal FDDI hub/switch. For example cisco/cabletron/crecendo had ethnernet switches with a FDDI uplink, that you could use. As a second question, I have a number of DEC/Compaq/HP PCI FDDI cards which were given to me. They have optical connectors. If I were to make use of these would I need another concentrator, or is there a box which will support both media with plug in modules, for example. Cabletron made such thing... But you need nothing to build a FDDI ring, its a A and a B ring, you can just plug the cards together with fiber-patch-cables. -P Thanks for the help, Mark. -- http://www.wickensonline.co.uk http://hecnet.eu http://declegacy.org.uk http://retrochallenge.net https://twitter.com/#!/%40urbancamo