17 Apr
2003
17 Apr
'03
10:44 a.m.
Found this this morning. Full length 16 ISAcard for a PC. Marked "Arnet
Smartport" "Made in USA" and "Copyright 1985 Arnet Corporation".
It has a daughterboard marked "Arnet Smart Plus 4". The main board has two
copper shielded 34 pin ribbon cables that extend out the back panel. Snybody know what
this is?
Joe
17 Apr
17 Apr
11:21 a.m.
Joe wrote:
Found this this morning. Full length 16 ISAcard for
a PC. Marked "Arnet Smartport" "Made in USA" and "Copyright 1985
Arnet Corporation". It has a daughterboard marked "Arnet Smart Plus 4". The
main board has two copper shielded 34 pin ribbon cables that extend out the back panel.
Snybody know what this is?
Joe
This is a serial port board. The ribbon cables go to breakout boxes
that contain the serial port connectors. I think that Digi acquired
Arnet.
Martin
6:19 p.m.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Martin Marshall" <martinm(a)allwest.net>
To: <cctalk(a)classiccmp.org>
Sent: Thursday, April 17, 2003 3:18 PM
Subject: Re: What is a Smartnet Arnet card?
The Arnet "Smart" cards had on-card microprocessor and buffering for better
throughput and lower main cpu utilization. The other "non-smart" cards were
more like a plain old serial card on a PC, differing mostly in that they had
more than 2 ports.
I have a 4-port Arnet card (non-smart) that has a (large) ISA card, a ribbon
cable, and an external mounting plate with a "breakout box" (built for a max
of 8 ports), with 4 connectors loaded. I used it with SCO UNIX and it worked
fine, actually better than the SCO UNIX did :-) It is very difficult to
develop C code with a compiler that dumps core every time I try to generate
a listing file...(dang M$ compiler!).
Digi DID acquire Arnet some time back. Last time I looked, Digi still had
some drivers and documentation for the Arnet stuff on their web site.
Stuart Johnson
Joe wrote:
> Found this this morning. Full length 16 ISAcard for a PC. Marked
"Arnet Smartport" "Made in USA" and "Copyright 1985 Arnet
Corporation". It
has a daughterboard marked "Arnet Smart Plus 4". The main board has two
copper shielded 34 pin ribbon cables that extend out the back panel. Snybody
know what this is?
Joe
This is a serial port board. The ribbon cables go to breakout boxes
that contain the serial port connectors. I think that Digi acquired
Arnet.
Martin
18 Apr
18 Apr
3:20 a.m.
At 10:16 PM 4/17/03 -0500, Staurt wrote:
----- Original Message -----
From: "Martin Marshall" <martinm(a)allwest.net>
To: <cctalk(a)classiccmp.org>
Sent: Thursday, April 17, 2003 3:18 PM
Subject: Re: What is a Smartnet Arnet card?
The Arnet "Smart" cards had on-card microprocessor and buffering for better
throughput and lower main cpu utilization. The other "non-smart" cards were
more like a plain old serial card on a PC, differing mostly in that they had
more than 2 ports.
I have a 4-port Arnet card (non-smart)
Well do you want a smart one?
Joe
Joe wrote:
> Found this this morning. Full length 16 ISAcard for a PC. Marked
"Arnet Smartport" "Made in USA" and "Copyright 1985 Arnet
Corporation". It
has a daughterboard marked "Arnet Smart Plus 4". The main board has two
copper shielded 34 pin ribbon cables that extend out the back panel. Snybody
know what this is?
Joe
This is a serial port board. The ribbon cables go to breakout boxes
that contain the serial port connectors. I think that Digi acquired
Arnet.
Martin 
2:40 a.m.
At 15:42 17/04/2003 +0000, you wrote:
Found this this morning. Full length 16 ISAcard for
a PC. Marked
"Arnet Smartport" "Made in USA" and "Copyright 1985 Arnet
Corporation".
It has a daughterboard marked "Arnet Smart Plus 4". The main board has
two copper shielded 34 pin ribbon cables that extend out the back panel.
Snybody know what this is?
Joe
It's a serial expansion unit. The ribbon cables connect to a "black box"
with 4 (or 8) DB25 connectors on it. Lots of jumpers on the back to swap
pins about for DCE/DTE/combinations, but otherwise no electronics in there.
The unit is a 4 port, and you add the expansion card to make it up to eight.
The Smart port has intelligence on it, to take the load off the
machine. They did a Multiport version which was just multiple plain old
ports that you could address as serial ports at whatever IO addresses you
configured the card at. The Smart port would need drivers installing.
We used to use a lot of them in days when we ran multi-user operating
systems on 8086/286/386 servers!
There is a large box full of cards, and even more of the external boxes at
the office. Manuals too.
I've also got the Smartport SCO-Xenix drivers, and the diagnostic disc in
front of me here (were in the same box as the wyse setup discs I posted
earlier).
If you want copies, etc., let me know! If you want an external box, I can
do that too, for the cost of shipping.
Regards
Rob.
3:23 a.m.
At 12:35 PM 4/18/03 +0100, Rob wrote:
At 15:42 17/04/2003 +0000, you wrote:
Thanks for the offer but I don't need the card. Do you want it? FWIW this was in
an old Compaq 386 DeskPro (386 20 I think).
Joe
Found this this morning. Full length 16
ISAcard for a PC. Marked
"Arnet Smartport" "Made in USA" and "Copyright 1985 Arnet
Corporation".
It has a daughterboard marked "Arnet Smart Plus 4". The main board has
two copper shielded 34 pin ribbon cables that extend out the back panel.
Snybody know what this is?
Joe
It's a serial expansion unit. The ribbon cables connect to a "black box"
with 4 (or 8) DB25 connectors on it. Lots of jumpers on the back to swap
pins about for DCE/DTE/combinations, but otherwise no electronics in there.
The unit is a 4 port, and you add the expansion card to make it up to eight.
The Smart port has intelligence on it, to take the load off the
machine. They did a Multiport version which was just multiple plain old
ports that you could address as serial ports at whatever IO addresses you
configured the card at. The Smart port would need drivers installing.
We used to use a lot of them in days when we ran multi-user operating
systems on 8086/286/386 servers!
There is a large box full of cards, and even more of the external boxes at
the office. Manuals too.
I've also got the Smartport SCO-Xenix drivers, and the diagnostic disc in
front of me here (were in the same box as the wyse setup discs I posted
earlier).
If you want copies, etc., let me know! If you want an external box, I can
do that too, for the cost of shipping.
Regards
Rob.
7767
days inactive
7768
days old
5 comments
4 participants
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