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Home Forums 68kMLA Best Ethernet expansion card for SE/30? — #5
Post #5 by Trash80toHP_Mini
Source Forum68kMLA
CategoryPeripherals
Post DateWed, 20 May 2015 - 19:16
Original URLhttps://68kmla.org/bb/threads/best-ethernet-expansion-card-for-se-30.1966/
Post
For general flexibility, any NIC with PDS passthru that's compatible with the faster clock of the IIsi would be my overall suggestion. Not all SE/30 NICs have a passthru. Not all are compatible with the IIsi, but I've not heard of a IIsi NIC that won't work going the other direction, it wouldn't have made any sense at all for a mfr. to have offered one with that limitation as a product back in the day.

The best NIC I've seen for the ultimate in flexibility is Asante's MacCon/IIsi/SE/30. The PDS equipped Compacts and IIsi all required a two part card with PDS section and a backplane breakout board/cover plate connected by an umbilical when an I/O connector was required, normally a ribbon cable and connected to a daughtercard in the case of a NIC.

The Asante MacCon has provision for RJ45/10bT and Co-Ax/ThinNet connectors and transceiver conversion circuitry on what I'd call a granddaughter card that appears to be the main section of the I/O card. The caged DA-15/ThickNet connector on a very simple, detachable passthru card for the PDS card's standard output.

Removing the ThickNet section between NIC and granddaughter card frees up the backplane panel's D-Sub cutout for the (un-caged) DA-19 of a Radius Color Pivot II/IIsi should pick one up (available brand new and very inexpensive) for your SE/30. It can be installed in the PDS card's passthru connector per uniserver's impressive hack (literally and figuratively, very [8D] ) and the VidCard's DA-15 output connector can be easily installed in the MacCon's backplane coverplate cutout.

mp.ls