Excelan EXOS 205[TE]

Hello Don, those cards were also used in some versions of sni rm200 workstations (with ISA-bus). They have a 80186 CPU some RAM absolutely no ROM. They also have a tricky bootstrap. The 80186 is held in reset state. The host writes an first stage boot loader to the dual ported RAM and releases the 80186. Then the second stage boot loader is transfered with some handshake. Then the firmware is downloaded into the RAM and depending on this firmware the card can handle some of the protocol layers to take some IO load of the host CPU. There were also SCPs (Siemens Communication Processor as they are called in the rm world) for token ring and/or other host bus systems like multibus (in the rm400 / rm600). I once had 5 exos205 and was trying to make a linux driver for them, but lack of spare time and too much sun equipment - so I gave them to a colleague. There exists (existed) a paket driver for msdos. The ethernet chip is an (IIRC) intel 82586. I never found much information about those cards. Gerold Don Y wrote: -- Gerold Pauler Tel.: +49 30 75 70 42 78 Katharinenstr. 7 Mobil: +49 173 23 49 440 10711 Berlin eMail: gerold.pauler at gmx.net