Arcnet

Radio Shack catalog page from 1984

Arcnet, which stands for Attached Resource Computer NETwork, is a networking standard created by Datapoint Communications in 1976. It provided a way for multiple computers to share printers and files. One of the main advantage of Arcnet at the time was that it was substantially cheaper than its competitors, such as Ethernet.

Radio Shack sold Arcnet cards and hardware for the Model II/12/16/6000 series starting in 1982. Arcnet cards were planned for the Model III and 4 but were never released. Two remnants of that planned support are the four functions labeled “Reserved for Arcnet” in the Programmer’s Guide to TRSDOS 6 and an Arcnet boot error message in the Model 4P ROM.

Prices for Ethernet hardware began to fall during the mid-1980s as more companies began selling hardware and Ethernet eventually completely replaced Arcnet for computer networking. Before Arcnet finally disappeared from the Radio Shack catalogs in the 1990s, it had been renamed Vianet. Cards were also available for the Model 2000 and Model 1000/1200/3000 MS-DOS computers.

There were Ethernet cards sold for many older computers of that era, but not the Model I/III/4. Perhaps part of the reason was the Radio Shack focus on Arcnet rather than Ethernet. From the news article “Tandy Picks Arcnet” in the December 1981 issue of 80 Microcomputing:

The Fort Worth, TX firm has announced it will use Arcnet—a  series of protocols and software developed by Datapoint—to link Model IIs and future Radio Shack computers into large scale systems.

Tandy President John Roach said in a statement his firm chose Arcnet for its low cost, high speed, simple installation, proven reliability and future compatibility.

Jon Shirley, vice president of computer merchandising for Radio Shack, added: “In concept and operation, Arcnet is similar to Ethernet, but unlike Ethernet, Arcnet is based on a proven, reliable technique with over four years of field operation.”

However Larry Spellhaug, manager of marketing services for Xerox—which, with Digital Equipment Corporation and Intel, developed Ethernet—said that the system has six years of experience behind it. He added that the corporations involved are confident there is demand for their system. Hewlett-Packard Co. and Nixdorf Computer Co. have pledged to use Ethernet in their networking communications.

Filed Under Hardware · Networking