tim@nmtvax.UUCP (04/24/84)
<Void where porhibited>
Well, as everyone that is looking for a ethernet card for their VME bus
systems already know, the VME ethernet world is bleak. I did manage to
find two companys that have boards and software though. The first company,
Communications Machinery Corporation
1421 State Street
Santa Barbara, CA 93101
(805) 963-9679
has a board available now for $3450. The high cost has to do with the
following problem. CMC is having trouble getting the LANCE ethernet controller
chips they want from AMD. AMD has so far pushed back delivery of the chips
13 months. To get around this problem CMC design a plug in board for the
ethernet board that emulates the LANCE chip. The extra board takes another
slot space and about $950 in extra cost. CMC hopes to have the LANCE chips
in 6 months and will replace any boards bought now for free and pretest them
at that time. They didn't say if you would get your $950 back though. I
wonder.....
The second company,
Excelan, Inc.
2180 Fortune Drive
San Jose, California 95131
(408) 945-9526
has a ethernet board that they say will be ready by august. Its cost will be
$3000. I don't know any interesting details to report on this one.
Well, Ethernet boards for a VME bus are very expensive from what I can
tell. Both of the above boards have firmware processors that have everything
up through the TCP/IP. I.e they have on board processors and memory along
with the ethernet hardware. If I find out anything else I'll post it to the
net at another time. I hope this helps some of you who asked that I post
what I found.....
Tim Tucker
...ucbvax!unmvax!nmtvax!tim