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Ethernet Card - proper cheap!

Posted by: VMSZealot on 2024-01-29 01:45:10

So I got an Ethernet card for my Mac SE. A properly cheap Ethernet card - £20 all in - which looks to be in good condition. It's an Asante Maccon, which is the same family of card as I have in my SE/30. But why so cheap? Erm - because it's missing a key part. There's no daughterboard.

The daughterboard looks to be the same as the one that the SE/30 Asante Maccon uses - which, if I've understood correctly, makes sense. I think that the main card is an AUI board, and the daughterboard is just a twisted pair transceiver. A quick shufty at the chips on the board backs this up (but I'm open to any corrections that anyone wants to make!)

So here's my plan. I'm going to whip the daughterboard from the SE/30 and see if it works with the SE's Asante Maccon. If it does, then I'm going check the circuit to see whether the daughterboards AUI connector is just a pass through (I suspect it is - but I've never used it, natch, because I use the RJ45 socket). If it is a pass through then I'm going to make up a cable from the ribbon cable to a DB-15 connector and just use an external transceiver.

Does my plan seem sound? Does anyone see any objections - or have any advice?

Posted by: Daniël on 2024-01-29 01:53:56

I think that the main card is an AUI board, and the daughterboard is just a twisted pair transceiver.

That is correct.
As for intercompatibility between boards, it seems that most manufacturers did adhere to some sort of standard pinout.

In my SE, I'm using a Novell EtherPort SE (which is a rebranded Shiva card as far as I can find), with a spare SE/30 DynaPORT breakout board, as I bought a cheap DynaPORT SE/30 card a while before the Novell card, and it came with two breakout boards.
I bought the Novell card cheaply due to the lack of a breakout board and thus being untested, and anticipated I needed to hack the breakout board slightly to make it have the same pinout, but probing around showed it in fact uses the same, pin-for-pin.

Thus, I would be highly surprised if the Asante SE card used a different pinout from their SE/30 card.
There's also this modern recreation for a breakout board:

MacTwister: a MacCon/Etherport/Dayna Twisted Pair breakout board

Hello, I would like to share my project that is long overdue for publishing here - MacTwister, a fairly universal Twisted Pair breakout board for a variety of SE and SE/30 network cards. It’s about the small PCB that you screw to the computer chassis that contains an external connector. I was...

68kmla.org

Posted by: cheesestraws on 2024-01-29 02:21:46

I have a spare 3com backplate/daughtercard you can have if you like. Dunno if it is compatible but you are welcome to try.

Posted by: VMSZealot on 2024-01-29 03:10:54

I have a spare 3com backplate/daughtercard you can have if you like. Dunno if it is compatible but you are welcome to try.

I may get in touch about this - but first I want to see if I can get my paws on one of those MacTwister boards. Could be an excellent solution!

Posted by: VMSZealot on 2024-01-29 03:11:59

That is correct.
As for intercompatibility between boards, it seems that most manufacturers did adhere to some sort of standard pinout.

In my SE, I'm using a Novell EtherPort SE (which is a rebranded Shiva card as far as I can find), with a spare SE/30 DynaPORT breakout board, as I bought a cheap DynaPORT SE/30 card a while before the Novell card, and it came with two breakout boards.
I bought the Novell card cheaply due to the lack of a breakout board and thus being untested, and anticipated I needed to hack the breakout board slightly to make it have the same pinout, but probing around showed it in fact uses the same, pin-for-pin.

Thus, I would be highly surprised if the Asante SE card used a different pinout from their SE/30 card.
There's also this modern recreation for a breakout board:

MacTwister: a MacCon/Etherport/Dayna Twisted Pair breakout board

Hello, I would like to share my project that is long overdue for publishing here - MacTwister, a fairly universal Twisted Pair breakout board for a variety of SE and SE/30 network cards. It’s about the small PCB that you screw to the computer chassis that contains an external connector. I was...

68kmla.org

Top tip! I've given @moldy a shout - hopefully they've still got some of those magic boards!

Posted by: cheesestraws on 2024-01-29 03:41:40

Yup - just drop me a DM if you decide you want one.