3 Apr
2014
3 Apr
'14
11:58 a.m.
On Thu, Apr 3, 2014 at 1:40 AM, Eric Smith <spacewar at gmail.com> wrote:
Ethernet or Starlan? They're completely unrelated
cards, but commonly
confused, and the Starlan card is useless (IMHO). The Starlan card has an
Intel 82586 NIC chip, while the Ethernet has (IIRC) an AMD 7990.
I'm sure original Ethernet cards are rare - is there anything on it
that might take a bit of work to reproduce? PALs, for example. I've
worked with a couple of vintage machines with AMD 7990s and the media
end of things is rather straightforward. On the host side, there's
usually address decode logic, a bus interface (unless it plugs into a
processor socket like some add-ons did), and often a boot ROM. I ask
because some day, I'd like to get a 3B1 and I'm expecting it won't
come with Ethernet.
-ethan