Baytek Inc, presumably based in the San Francisco Bay Area has come up with a simple local area networking schema based on the Small Computer Systems Interface more usually associated with attaching disk drives to computers. According to Microbytes Daily, instead of a complex array of network hardware and software, each computer or workstation on a Baytek network is outfitted with a SCSI port, complete with device driver. The nodes are daisy-chained, seven at a time, and plugged into a cable interface; up to eight interfaces can connect to each server, for a total of 56 users per server; multiple servers can be linked together. Because it runs its 64Kb packets through SCSI connections, the Baytek system transfers data two or three times as fast as conventional local networks, the company claims. And if there is a power or connection problem, rebooting or turning off any node has no effect on the network. Turning off the cable interface will suspend anything that is in progress, but when the cable interface is powered up again, whatever was happening across the link resumes. Baytek claims that the SCSI based system makes the problems of intalling a local network a thing of the past. Each node uses a SCSI device driver, which makes bringing a new node in a matter of installing the appropriate SCSI interface, attaching a node controller, and adding the driver to the computer’s operating system – it can be an MS-DOS .SYS file, a Mac resource in the System file, or a workstation’s Unix driver. The company says that it has been beta testing the network for more than a year, mainly with companies using it for CAD/CAM work, but it expects to break into other market sectors now that the system is ready for market. The Baytek server base unit starts at $17,000, and each node interface costs about $500, so the system is in the middle of the local network price range.
