AMillar@cup.portal.com (Alan DI Millar) (03/14/91)
Hi-
I have recently inherited some HP Starlan 10 equipment, with little
documentation. I have 2 of the hubs, and a few of the PC cards. The
hub installation manual says the hubs are compatible with the 10BaseT
drafts, but this is (I think) a year or two old.
Does anyone have more information on the HP Starlan 10 equipment? I'm
interested in knowing if this is the same as the older AT&T Starlan
hardware. I remember reading somewhere that some early 10BaseT equipment
can work with the final standard, if it has the option to disable a
particular feature (link integrity?). If so, how about this stuff?
Also, anyone know of a packet driver for these cards?
I apologize for the vagueness of this posting, but I'll appreciate
any help. Thanks.
- Alan Millarcmilono@netcom.COM (Carlo Milono) (03/15/91)
In article <40106@cup.portal.com> AMillar@cup.portal.com (Alan DI Millar) writes: >Hi- > > I have recently inherited some HP Starlan 10 equipment, with little >documentation. (stuff deleted) > > Does anyone have more information on the HP Starlan 10 equipment? I'm >interested in knowing if this is the same as the older AT&T Starlan >hardware. I remember reading somewhere that some early 10BaseT equipment >can work with the final standard, if it has the option to disable a >particular feature (link integrity?). If so, how about this stuff? >Also, anyone know of a packet driver for these cards? > Thank god for standards. Both H-P, whose Pat Thaler chaired the IEEE, and AT&T waited until the 10BaseT standard was at least stable before putting equipment on the market. Early Synoptics and Cabletron stuff won't work with anything else at the twisted-pair level...if you got some, you can interconnect with the AUI port. Link Integrity was the final draft inclusion, it being the bone of contention. I don't believe that H-P put out anything that wouldn't interoperate with the Draft 9 standard (LI excluded)...and neither did AT&T...so I am confident you can interconnect those two vendor's stuff. If I'm wrong...well, Pat will correct me! -- +--------------------------------------------------------------------------+ | Carlo Milono: cmilono@netcom.apple.com or apple!netcom!cmilono | |"When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign, | |that the dunces are all in confederacy against him." - Jonathan Swift | +--------------------------------------------------------------------------+
erics@hpindda.cup.hp.com (Dale McAtee) (03/16/91)
Alan, The HP StarLAN-10 cards come in two flavors. The first were (except for the wiring drivers) equivalent to the 3Com 3C501 EtherLink card. If you have drivers for the 3C501 cards (including Clarkson packet drivers) they will work with the card. The card is known as a D1802A or a HP27236A card. You will see the numbers 27236-xxxxx somewhere in the card. The next generation of HP StarLAN-10 cards were a much improved design, with 32K of buffer memory (compared to 2K for the 3C501 design). This card is known as the D1808A card, or as the HP27240A card. It will have the numbers 27240-xxxxx somewhere on the card. Recently there has been added a HPLAN driver to the Clarkson Packet Driver Collection. From a driver perspective, the HP27240A cards are the same as the HP27245A EtherTwist 10-Base-T card, so the HPLAN drivers should work for it. The HP EtherTwist 10-Base-T cards can be connected to the HP StarLAN-10 hub, the only thing that needs to be done is to disable the "linkbeat" integrity checking on the card, via a dip-switch. If you need NDIS drivers for the HP27236A cards, look in the 3Com forum on CompuServe for 3C501 EtherLink drivers. If you need NDIS drivers for the HP27245A StarLAN-10 PC Link II card, look for the NDIS drivers in the New Uploads or Vectra file section in the HP forum on CompuServe. Again, these will be called drivers for the HP2724X EtherTwist cards... As always, these are personal comments, no warrenties, written or implied, from the commisioner of baseball, Hewlett-Packard, etc.... -Dale McAtee