Please correct me if I’m wrong, might have breathed in too many soap fumes.
Token Ring sends the packets to every node by passing it from one node and if that node is not the recipient it passes it on to the next node.
Memos were created the day before with a list of recipients then it was passed around till everyone on the list had read it.
My memory of token ring is vague, but I think it was originally a ring in series as you said - however token ring switches (that isn’t what they were called) also existed, which was the “modern” way of writing up a token ring network.
Yeah, see the pic in the thread. The “switch” (MAU, Media Access Unit) seems redundant to me though, based on what I read I would expect the network interface cards to create a functional ring on their own over a shared medium. Maybe the old cards for ring-topology networks only worked in that one mode and the MAU made them compatible by pretending they were part of a physical ring, cutting computers out of it if they turned off.
Yes, I think that’s probably how it worked.