COMPAQ ISA PC to ethernent

[Chris Zach]

> I think "compatible" is a weird things with Novell Ethernet labeled / 
> citified cards as it's my understanding that Novell didn't actually sell 
> the vast majority of NE-1000 / NE-2000 cards.  Instead, they licensed / 
> certified that other manufacturer cards adhered to their standard.  Thus 
> there were a LOT of non-Novell NE-1000 / NE-2000 cards.  And that it's 
> mostly by design.

Correct. Novell got out of the hardware market after the NP600 Ethernet 
cards and those impressive ISA disk controller cards. Both were pretty 
impressive, if I recall the NP600 had the entire IPX/SPX protocol on it 
to offload work from the CPU and the disk card could do mirroring right 
on the controller. But newer CPUs just pointed to the whole "the CPU is 
quicker anyway" so Novell got out of that business and licensed boards 
like the NE2000 for a pittance.

That, the Intel Etherexpress, and the 3c509 pretty much did it for 
Ethernet till PCI.

> I'm curious to know what network stack you're going to run on that 
> system.  I don't know if it's an 8088, 80286, 80386 or what.  Each 
> obviously has different capabilities.  Though I guess the 8-bit ISA 
> slots indicate that it's probably 8088 or 80286.  Though I think that 
> Compaq may have used the 8086 too.  Whatever it is, chances are good 
> that memory will be small if not tight.

Pretty much all 80206's had 16 bit busses, the only ones I saw with 8 
bit were XT's upgraded with the Mountain/286 or that oddball Microsoft 
card. The Mountain was the weirdest, 8 bit card, 80286 with a couple of 
K of cache memory, and a plug to go into the 8086 CPU socket. That was 
it, no memory, no disk, no kidding.

CZ

Novel ECNE (I so don't get to drag that out much anymore. Drat)