[gerdesj]

I ran 10base2 (coax) between two hubs in 1994ish: Out of a window, over the roof and back through a window. The building was a bakery (pie factory) in the Newnham industrial estate, Plymton, near Plymouth, Devon, UK.

Hilliers had two sites with a road in between. We had an IBM System/36 (with a dicky fan which needed prodding in summer or the box would shutdown due to overheating). Once we surrounded it with bags of solid CO2 in a really hot summer to keep it running.

The two sites were linked with synced modems on standard phone lines. Normally serial lines are async but these things ran as sync. Even back then a change would take milli-seconds to perhaps deci-seconds to process so why on earth require sync! There will be a reason and it will have been forgotten by today's slapdash approach to nearly everything.