6 May
2007
6 May
'07
6:50 p.m.
I wonder if you could use an old network card that had
both 10Base2
and 10BaseT connections. I had an old Ansel ISA card with 4 10Base2
ports and 1 10BaseT and I've used it that way.
That sounds as though your caard had a built-in hub (was it really 4 BNCs
and one RJ45? I tould have thought the other way round would be more useful).
Mot cards with 2 network connectors (say 10base2 and 10baseT) simply have
the transceiver circuitry for each netowrk type, and a set of links to
connect either (but not both) to the ehternet chip. Now, you can't simply
connect 2 transceivers back-to-back to make a network converter, you need
a vit of loginc [1] to hanclde collisions, etc. And that logic wouldn't
be presset on a normal network card.
[]] I have an old device desigend to link a pair of transceivers (it has
a couple of AUI connectors on the back). It's quite complicated, there's
a RAM-based state machine linked to a couple of ehternet encoder/decoder
ICs, and a Z80-based microconttoller system to load the state machine RAM.
So I doubt you could use a network card as a media converter
Of course that logic is present in the chip you find in a 10baseT hub,
which is why you can use one of those as a converter.
-tony