Network Hardware
For ethernet interaces, it depends.
For solid ISA/10BT ethernet, the WD8013 cards are tough to beat.
Fast solid and reliable, and with reasonable buffer memory.
Moving forward, the DEC DecChip ethernet cards are also reliable.
Often for the same reasons.
Their only downfall is typical drivers don't negotiate speed/duplex
modes correctly with many switches.
That isn't a unique problem though, most of the cards listed here have
the same problem ... and some don't.
Most likely a driver or negotiation issue.
Some of the Clone DECChip cards are pretty decent.
The 3-COM 3cXXX /C (ex) cards are also quite reasonable for PCI
land, and most of the come with boot-proms and wake-on-ethernet setups.
The Intel PRO/100 series of cards have some idiosyncrasys, but are
also good solid performers.
They have the advantage of PXE boot ROMS.
- DEC DecChip 10/100 Ethernet Cards (2 styles)
- Hayes ESP (2 port)
- ??? 4 Port Serial Card
- WD8013 Ethernet Cards
- D-Link DECchip 10/100 Ethernet
- LinkSys DECchip 10/100 Ethernet
Hayes ESP
XXX 4-port Serial
??? Supra FAX Modem
Need to find the actual driver, this probably isn't it.
Zoom UUCP Fax Modem
MultiTech 28.2 Modem
MultiTech 19.2 Modem
DEC 10/100 Ethernet
AM985 Ethernet
WD8013 Ethernet
There are a bunch of differnet cards which use this hard to
find driver.
The worst thing about these cards is that they don't auto-sense
10/100 very well, and this often drives the network into
confusion and low packet rates.
However, these cards when configured correctly are ROCK SOLID
and just work for forever.
I sorta like the DECChip cards anyway, (and the wd8013 cards),
since they are reliable, if not the fastest.
XXXX track down the drivers for these things.
- EtherPower Ethernet network cards
(SMC8432 board types)
- EtherPower^2 Dual-Channel Ethernet network cards
(SMC8434 board types)
- EtherPower 10/100 Fast Ethernet 100BASE-TX network cards
(SMC9332DST board type)
- EtherPower 10/100 Fast Ethernet 100BASE-TX network cards
(SMC9332BDT board type)
- EtherPower 10/100 Dual-Channel
Fast Ethernet 100BASE-TX network cards
(SMC9334BDT board type)
- EtherPower 10/100 Fast Ethernet 100BASE-T4 network cards
(SMC9332BVT board type)
- 3com 905c Managed Root
- 3com 905c Managed Root
- MBA -- Managed Boot Agent Downloads (BootROM Firmware updater)
- 3C905B-TX-M NIC Release Notes
- 10/100 PCI Network Interface User Guide
- You can use the NIC Doctor tool in Windows Device
management (in the driver) to disable network boot
capabilities. XXX How to do that w/out Windows?
- Key Sequence ALT-CTRL-B will enter boot setup.
- Key Sequence 'N' during timeout forces network boot.
- XXX This card is inconvenient. If it detects no boot block on a
hard disk, it automatically fires up a PXE boot.
This is a big problem -- say you want to install to that hard
disk, from a CD for instance. You can't disable the network
boot to do that.
- XXX One reason it was failing is that my floppy was unplugged.
However, it was still ignoring the bootable CD.
- To fix this issue, get a newer MBA Firmware. Run
MBACFG
from the tools floppy. You can tell the network card
to listen to the BIOS Boot Selector and probe.
You can also disable the boot sequencer, or configure it a
bit more. I haven't checked the A-C-B tool to see if it
has those extra options yet.
- Other than that, it does a nice job for a 3com card!
NetBlazer, 386
NetBlazer, 486
These little NetGear switches (and the earlier hubs) are
some nice networking hardware.
I think the NetGear Pro-Safe series switches and hubs
are a good value for the money.
They have metal cases for good heat disipation, and a quite usable
set of status indicators.
The older units have excellent status indicator lights!
They just sit there and run for years and years.
The weak point tends to be the power supplies -- you might want
to get a few spares early in the product lifetime when they
are easy to find.
Otherwise, I've found that is often easier to just buy a newer
switch or hub than to try and find a new power supply!
- Metal cases to prevent over heating, and the newer ones run
quite cool anyway.
- External power supplies ... which unfortunately can be difficult
to locate for the older high current / low voltage models.
- Good indicator lights to determine what network traffic is doing.
- No fans ... wicked quiety
- Quite reliable -- we had a whole rack doing network backbone tasks,
and they just ... work!
- The only exception to that is occasional power supply failures;
I had one fail a couple of weeks after I returned from trip.
If it had failed while away, the network would have been down
w/out backup.
OTOH, a redundant power supply switch to deal with that situation
would have been overkill for normal work.
The only real issue with these switches is that you can't
have any broadcast traffic on them.
They are dumb, so you can run a traffic sniffer on a port and see
what is up with all traffic on the net, especially across multiple
switches.
Admittedly that is a network debug issue, but it is a pain with
a distributed network.
- Apple M8799LL/A AirPort Extreme Base Station with Modem and Antenna.
- Also available w/out antenna and modem -- dropped after Airport Express.
- Also available w/out antenna and modem, but with POE.
- White "Saucer" Form Factor
- 802.11g/b Wireless 54Mbps 100BT
- Antenna Port for External Antenna
- Gateway/Router Seperates WAN from LAN / Wireless
- WAN 100BT Ethernet
- LAN 100BT Ethernet
- Modem Expander Card and Port
- USB Port for printing
- WDS (Wireless Distribution System)
-
- Apple M9470LL/A
- Wireless 802.11b/g 54 Mbps
- LAN/WAN 100BT Ethernet
- USB Port for printing
- Optical / Audio Combined Output for Stereo AirTunes
- Talks to iTunes for remote audio.
- A different 802.11n model is also avaiable, otw similar
- Product Specs
- Apple M
- 802.11n/g/b
- Can Disable b/g channels for full N speeds.
- 3 LAN Ports (Gigabit)
- USB
- Can share disks (sometimes slowly on USB) AirDisk
- Printer Sharing.
- Runs Really Hot with passive cooling -- watch out
- Apple MB321LL/A
- Wireless 802.11n
- Product Specs
- Won't do WPA2 by itself, it needs a WPA2 host or network,
presumably to get the keys and meta-data from.
- Apple M7600LL/E (/[CDE] support 128 bit encryption)
- May also be part 661-2549
- Wireless Port 11 Mbps 802.11b (10BT)
- Repackaged Orinoco Gold Card (128 bit encryption) in
special form factor to fit PowerMac/Book computers.
Same Card used in Snow Airport.
- 128 bit (104 bit) encryption.
- WEP 40 == 64 / 104 == 128 bit security ONLY (no WPA)
- Compatible Computers
- Compatible 3rd Party PCMCIA / Cardbus Cards
- Apple M8881LL/A
- Wireless Port 54 MBps, 802.11g/b (100BT)
- Broadcom Chipset
- Special Form Factor (Mini PCI) only fits in later G4/G5 Macs
but not all, the PCI-Express ones don't accept this card, they
need something special -- the quad core g5 fits into the it
doesn't work category.
- This is the same card found in the original
Airport Extreme.
- WEP but also WPA Security
- Compatible Computers
HP JetDirect xxxxB
Bolo's Computer Notes
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Last Modified:
Thu Jul 9 10:58:53 CDT 2015
Bolo (Josef Burger)
<bolo@cs.wisc.edu>