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Realtek RTL8139D PCI Network Card Compatible with a PowerMac 6500?
Posted by: GerrySch on 2025-06-25 19:48:03
Searching for a compatible networking card for the Power Mac 6500/300 I recently bought at VCF Southwest. Great bridge Mac but no networking. Apple Slot II cards start at $100 and are made with the RTL8139 chip. What I've read online indicates that any PCI networking card made with this chip is compatible and their starting price can be as low as $10. So if I were to buy this card, is it compatible with the included PowerMac drivers? I don't want to buy anything that's physically compatible but Apple's software won't recognize.

If you know of specific 3-party networking cards that are compatible, please let me know.
Thank you for your time and attention,
Gerry
Posted by: Fizzbinn on 2025-06-25 20:44:17
This should work in any Mac with a PCI slot:
www.ebay.com

FARALLON PN993 8970887-00-03 10/100 PCI Chip Realtek RTL8139C w/ CD | eBay

Find many great new & used options and get the best deals for FARALLON PN993 8970887-00-03 10/100 PCI Chip Realtek RTL8139C w/ CD at the best online prices at eBay! Free shipping for many products!
www.ebay.com
(I have one I've used in a 6500)

Mac drivers here (I don't believe any of the Apple distributed Ethernet drivers (extensions) support this Ethernet chipset):

Farallon Legacy Drivers - Macintosh Garden

This is a mirror of the Proxim downloads for legacy Farallon products, such as the PN# 595 Ethernet PCMCIA card. Includes a page rip of the Farallon page, some Windows drivers and PDF manuals.
macintoshgarden.org macintoshgarden.org
993v14.sit.hqx which is include in the #1 download.

If you want to use the 2 6500 PCI slots for other cards (display/video cards, USB, Firewire, etc) a cheaper alternative to a Apple Comm Slot II Ethernet card is this recreation:

Comm Slot II 10/100 Ethernet Cards – Tech by Androda

androda.work androda.work
Posted by: Juror22 on 2025-06-25 22:32:50
Apple Slot II cards start at $100 and are made with the RTL8139 chip.
There are CSII cards with the Digital 21040 chip as well. I've got one, but no longer have anything to install it in.

It appears that these work in the 6500 - https://discuss.haiku-os.org/t/power-mac-6500-audio-in-beos/12481 (the problem there is no sound in BeOS, but the CSII card's ethernet worked fine)
...but here it looks like pizzigri was having issues getting them to work with MacOS 8.6 -https://68kmla.org/bb/index.php?threads/apple-ethernet-csii-card-no-boot-in-a-6500-board.43802/ (there was no response or update, so a bit inconclusive on the outcome)
Posted by: treellama on 2025-06-26 04:21:38
The RTL8139 PCI card does require drivers, it doesn’t work with built in. The CS II with digital 21040 works without drivers but is 10 megabit only. Not that you’ll get anywhere near 100 Mb/s with OpenTransport anyway.

Read the bizarre caveats to the CS II recreations before purchasing one. Think what other similar decisions may have gone into the design of those cards.
Posted by: Fizzbinn on 2025-06-26 11:47:32
Not that you’ll get anywhere near 100 Mb/s with OpenTransport anyway

True, but you can get ~double the performance you get on 10 Mb/s. The question does remain if that is of much benefit for what you're doing with your old Mac. (its not really for me, just fun to play with)

I did some testing awhile back on this, as to not clutter this thread:
Posted by: GerrySch on 2025-06-27 16:37:22
My goal here is to be able to FTP between the Macs, Apple IIgs and Win 11 PCs on my local network. If I need to work on the internet, then I have my M1 MBP and Dell Win 11 machines. Yeah and to play too.
A new question. Is there a browser that runs under 9,1 that handles secure connections (https://) as well as display webpages like modern browsers Chrome and Firefox?

Thanks everyone for the help,
Gerry
Posted by: nathall on 2025-06-27 18:57:39
I’m only aware of Classilla 9.3.4, which can do modern https (TLS) stuff if you set up Crypto Ancienne to handle the encryption. I have it set up on my 8500 where I can run it in the background and use Classilla to browse. Note that only version 9.3.4 supports this.

I’m not aware of any other solution, but if there is one, I’d love to hear about it, too.
Posted by: GerrySch on 2025-07-16 22:06:08
I'm updating the thread with the lastest issue I've run into. The PM6500 is up and on the network and can talk to my LC475 without issue. It's not the same with the SE/30. I'm using a BlueSCSI with WiFi to get it on line and that works great. But the SE/30 has it's own network called 'Alternate Ethernet' to use the DaynaPort drivers to connect on line. Since the PM6500 and LC475 have ethernet cards and are hardwired to my local network, they are on an 'Ethernet' network but it appears to be isolated from from the SE/30. I have Appletalk on and I log into the LC and PM and they talk to each other. So how do I join the SE/30 to the 'ethernet' network so everyone can talk to each other? And what about my Win10 and 11 laptops along with my Synology NAS? I would like to have everyone sharing files. So, why are there two Apple ethernet virtual networks and how can I get everyone talking?

Thank you,
Gerry
Posted by: ArmorAlley on 2025-07-16 22:32:35
You could try the PCI cards with the RTL8169S chipset on it.
These are gigabit ethernet cards. I have one in my B&W G3.
I don't know if the driver works below Mac OS 8.6 though.

Realtek RTL8169S Gigabit Ethernet Card Driver - Macintosh Garden

Mac OS 9 driver for gigabit Ethernet PCI card. The documentation includes instructions on how to modify the driver (using Quadrivio General Edit Lite) if your card does not use the standard PCI vendor and device IDs. I've included a version modified for the Netgear GA311 card.
macintoshgarden.org macintoshgarden.org
Posted by: croissantking on 2025-07-17 01:07:57
I'm updating the thread with the lastest issue I've run into. The PM6500 is up and on the network and can talk to my LC475 without issue. It's not the same with the SE/30. I'm using a BlueSCSI with WiFi to get it on line and that works great. But the SE/30 has it's own network called 'Alternate Ethernet' to use the DaynaPort drivers to connect on line. Since the PM6500 and LC475 have ethernet cards and are hardwired to my local network, they are on an 'Ethernet' network but it appears to be isolated from from the SE/30. I have Appletalk on and I log into the LC and PM and they talk to each other. So how do I join the SE/30 to the 'ethernet' network so everyone can talk to each other? And what about my Win10 and 11 laptops along with my Synology NAS? I would like to have everyone sharing files. So, why are there two Apple ethernet virtual networks and how can I get everyone talking?

Thank you,
Gerry

The ‘Alternate Ethernet’ wording doesnt have anything to do with being on a separate network. IIRC, it’s something to do with the type of driver. So your issue is elsewhere.
Posted by: nathall on 2025-07-17 21:55:31
The ‘Alternate Ethernet’ wording doesnt have anything to do with being on a separate network. IIRC, it’s something to do with the type of driver. So your issue is elsewhere.

Right.

Don’t you have to have Open Transport in order to do AppleTalk over Ethernet? I thought the old System versions only could do AppleTalk via serial.

@GerrySch what version of OS is on the SE/30?
Posted by: finkmac on 2025-07-17 21:58:07
Don’t you have to have Open Transport in order to do AppleTalk over Ethernet? I thought the old System versions only could do AppleTalk via serial.
completely and utterly false
Posted by: nathall on 2025-07-17 21:59:23
completely and utterly false

Well, that’s very helpful. Care to contribute something worthwhile to help the guy?
Posted by: finkmac on 2025-07-17 22:20:58
no, i'm just here to call out bad information.

really though it's almost definitely bluescsi wifi finickiness or a cheap wifi access point dropping the appletalk packets
Posted by: cheesestraws on 2025-07-17 22:34:23
Don’t you have to have Open Transport in order to do AppleTalk over Ethernet? I thought the old System versions only could do AppleTalk via serial.

This is so wrong that it can't even see 'correct' on a clear day with a telescope.

Pre-OT, it'll be in the Network control panel. If there's no Network control panel, then the AppleTalk software isn't installed.
Posted by: cheesestraws on 2025-07-17 22:36:01
Well, that’s very helpful. Care to contribute something worthwhile to help the guy?

Weird, I'd assume that "stopping OP going down a rabbit hole on totally spurious information" was contributing something worthwhile; I appreciate that in some circles it has become fashionable to make confident statements based on things pulled out of one's backside, but if you don't like being called on it, perhaps try not to do it for things that are quite so trivially verifiable?
Posted by: Boctor on 2025-07-17 22:45:31
OP, if you don't mind my asking, did you make sure the AppleTalk control panel on your SE/30 has EtherTalk selected, and not the printer/modem ports? I'm almost sure you've already thought of this, since it'd be how you got the other Macs to see each other in Chooser, but that setting frequently seems to revert to default on my machines.

Come to think of it, does anyone more clever than me know if the AppleTalk port setting is a PRAM var? People often treat their SE/30s with extra care and leave them battery-less, so it'd at least explain why that preference won't persist.
Posted by: cheesestraws on 2025-07-17 22:48:31
Come to think of it, does anyone more clever than me know if the AppleTalk port setting is a PRAM var? People often treat their SE/30s with extra care and leave them battery-less, so it'd at least explain why that preference won't persist.

Wouldn't claim to be cleverer than you, but yes, it's PRAM, and it's opened early enough in boot that things like PRAM auto-restore won't auto-restore it (unless they special-case it which none of the tools I've seen do).
Posted by: croissantking on 2025-07-18 00:45:44
OP, if you don't mind my asking, did you make sure the AppleTalk control panel on your SE/30 has EtherTalk selected, and not the printer/modem ports? I'm almost sure you've already thought of this, since it'd be how you got the other Macs to see each other in Chooser, but that setting frequently seems to revert to default on my machines.

That would be the ‘Alternate Ethernet’ option that they said they selected.

Good point about that setting possibly not being held after shutdown, in case they don’t have a PRAM battery or an ATtiny85 based RTC.

To the OP, it would be worth considering picking up an SE/30 PDS Ethernet card that will provide much more reliable networking than DaynaPort emulation.
Posted by: nathall on 2025-07-18 08:39:54
Weird, I'd assume that "stopping OP going down a rabbit hole on totally spurious information" was contributing something worthwhile; I appreciate that in some circles it has become fashionable to make confident statements based on things pulled out of one's backside, but if you don't like being called on it, perhaps try not to do it for things that are quite so trivially verifiable?

Perhaps you need to brush up on your comprehension of the English language; posing something as a question, complete with the phrase “I thought” hardly qualifies as a confident statement. To most, that would indicate quite clearly the poster was NOT confident in the information. Also, there’s no call for arbitrarily and repeatedly being a prick.

Now, back to Gerry’s problem...
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