Funny, I was just going to respond with my story about the USS Carl Vincent - a carrier the USA built in the late 1970s.  When the Navy laid its keel, the White House was running Alto's donated by Xerox.   The Captain had seen them and wanted then for his new ship and wanted the CIC to be the most modern imagined.   Xerox did not sell them (and the Star had not been done yet), so they were sent to the CMU spin off 3 Rivers Computer (aka Triple Drip) to purchase 'PascAltos' ) later renamed the Perq instead.   We had a contract at Mellon to make they work as well as a bunch of programming.   We had designed the deployment with pre-cut ethernet cable (3Com transceivers) that did not use the 'stinger' technology, but fixed cable lengths, pre-cut and tested before installation.  But the Captain would have none of it, he had seen the fact that the taps could be moved and he wants the stinger types.

The deployment happen after I had graduated and left, so I never knew how that worked out in practice, but years sailing small boats, I just could not imagine that being reliable.

Clem