urlichs@smurf.sub.org (Matthias Urlichs) (06/12/91)
In comp.unix.aux, article <3105@redstar.cs.qmw.ac.uk>,
liam@cs.qmw.ac.uk (William Roberts;) writes:
<
< On the other hand, having to find an extra power point for the "AUI adaptor"
< (thick Ethernet) is really annoying. Apple people tell me it's because of
< NuBus power budgets etc, but I see it as a reason for buying non Apple cards...
Speaking of which, is there any list out there which Ethernet cards are A/UX
2.0 compatible?
Alternately, if there isn't, and if people mail me their experiences, I'll
create such a list.
--
Matthias Urlichs -- urlichs@smurf.sub.org -- urlichs@smurf.ira.uka.de /(o\
Humboldtstrasse 7 - 7500 Karlsruhe 1 - FRG -- +49-721-621127(0700-2330) \o)/thad@public.BTR.COM (Thaddeus P. Floryan) (06/14/91)
In article <K#A-JL@smurf.sub.org> urlichs@smurf.sub.org (Matthias Urlichs) writes: >[...] >Speaking of which, is there any list out there which Ethernet cards are A/UX >2.0 compatible? >[...] The Tri-Data cards work perfectly and are 100% compatible (per my own tests) with A/UX 2.* Additionally, the Tri-Data cards have BOTH the D-15 AUI connector and a 10BaseT connector. A diagnostic LED (visible from the outside of the computer) indicates not only a power-on state but also any problems (by a series of "blinks"); mine are on steady! :-) Performance of the Tri-Data is *VERY* satisfactory: ftp's transfer stats in verbose mode indicate (an average) of: 120KBytes/S between the A/UX box and a Sun 3/60 with SunOS 4.1.1, 40-45KBytes/S between the A/UX box and a *REAL* IBM-PC/AT (DOS 3.3) with a WD8003 and WIN/TCP, and 50KBytes/S between the A/UX box and a 3B1 (AT&T 3.51m) and WIN/TCP. If you're not using 10BaseT (twisted pair), you'll need a transceiver to tap into the backbone (any of 10BASE2, 10BASE5, 10BaseT, fibre, etc.) The Tri-Data card takes its power from the NuBus and I've had no problems (with the Tri-Data card) since its installation in April. Thad Floryan [ thad@btr.com (OR) {decwrl, mips, fernwood}!btr!thad ]
thad@public.BTR.COM (Thaddeus P. Floryan) (06/14/91)
In article <3062@public.BTR.COM> thad@public.BTR.COM (Thaddeus P. Floryan) writes: >[...] >The Tri-Data cards work perfectly and are 100% compatible (per my own tests) >with A/UX 2.* >[...] Arrgh, I neglected to mention the REASON I use that card is to back-up the A/UX box using the tape drive on the Sun. Works just fine. Thad Floryan [ thad@btr.com (OR) {decwrl, mips, fernwood}!btr!thad ]
alexis@panix.uucp (Alexis Rosen) (06/14/91)
Thad Floryan writes about his Tri-Data card, which works perfectly under A/UX 2.0.1 for him. (Or was it 2.0.0? It shouldn't matter, though.) First of all, all that he says of the Tri-Data is true of the Asante boards as well. I'm very happy with them. Recently, they cut their prices to under $400 for their entire line of boards. Support has always been good. A few questions about the Tri-Data (I've never seen them): Does it have a 64KB buffer? As of A/UX 2.0.0, 16KB is "not supported" and could conceivably cause crashes (I think William R. wrote about this). What's the price? Is it register-compatible with the Apple board? That's one reason I've stuck with the Asante boards- they can run with Apple's drivers, so I don't have to worry about the kind of thing that has happened to owners of the older Kinetics/Excellan/Novell/Dayna EtherPort cards (i.e., no support = no drivers = can't use it under A/UX 2.0) If the Tri-Data board compares well with the Asante on these three points then it's a good card. I won't swear to it but I think I found that FTP between a Mac IIfx and a Sun IPC ran at about 110KB/sec with the Asante. Assuming that the IPC is as fast as the Sun 3, the Tri-Data may have an edge over the Asante. (Then again, that may be a very poor assumption.) --- Alexis Rosen Owner/Admin, Panix Public Access Unix alexis@panix.com
randy@tessa (randy frank) (06/15/91)
We use GatorCards from Cayman systems. They support thick and thin but not 10baseT (at least ours don't the newer ones might). Anyway we have three cards in MacIIs and two of them are running AUX 2.0.1. You do have to get a driver from Cayman systems (no cost) but they work fine. -- rjf. Randy Frank, Engineer | (319) 335-6712 University of Iowa, Image Analysis Facility | 73 EMRB randy@tessa.iaf.uiowa.edu | Iowa City, IA 52242
liam@dcs.qmw.ac.uk (William Roberts;) (06/18/91)
In <1991Jun14.052133.13353@panix.uucp> alexis@panix.uucp (Alexis Rosen) writes: >A few questions about the Tri-Data (I've never seen them): >Does it have a 64KB buffer? As of A/UX 2.0.0, 16KB is "not supported" and >could conceivably cause crashes (I think William R. wrote about this). The 16K vs 64K issue is related to Apple's own cards (the old style ones). I can't recall what I said at the time, except that the 64K card made a significant difference to the NFS benchmarks I ran, but the eventual facts that emerged were: 1) Apple stopped shipping their card with 16K RAM and put 64K RAM on instead (this started at Rev L, if I remember correctly). 2) Apple didn't stop supporting the 16K cards - the same driver works for both cards since it probes the card at A/UX boot time to find out how much memory is available The new style cards could well be different: they certainly have a processor on the card for A/ROSE purposes, but I don't know if they are otherwise register compatible with the old ones. I don't think that the A/UX 2.0.1 drivers make use of the processor. >Is it register-compatible with the Apple board? That's one reason I've >stuck with the Asante boards- they can run with Apple's drivers, so I don't >have to worry about the kind of thing that has happened to owners of the >older Kinetics/Excellan/Novell/Dayna EtherPort cards (i.e., no support = >no drivers = can't use it under A/UX 2.0) Once again - all drivers which worked under 1.1 still work under 2.0 and 2.0.1. The difference between a "new for 2.0" driver and an older 1.1 driver is that the old drivers don't support EtherTalk Phase 2: they still work fine for NFS, IP and so on. My site still has about 50 old-style EtherPort II cards and is happily running A/UX 2.0 on them using the 1.1 drivers: we don't much care about EtherTalk in our environment so this doesn't cause us problems. >If the Tri-Data board compares well with the Asante on these three points >then it's a good card. I won't swear to it but I think I found that FTP >between a Mac IIfx and a Sun IPC ran at about 110KB/sec with the Asante. >Assuming that the IPC is as fast as the Sun 3, the Tri-Data may have an >edge over the Asante. (Then again, that may be a very poor assumption.) This is a very dubious comparison: a SPARCstation IPC is supposed to be at least 3 times as fast as a Sun 3, something like 12-16 MIPS. My NFS benchmarking work included a test of pure CPU+Ethernet performance without any disk involvement: this showed no improvement from SPARCstation 1 to SPARCstation 1+ (despite increasing the rating from 12 MIPS to 16 MIPS), and the fastest machine of all (296 units vs 273) was a Mac IIfx with the 64K RAM Apple card. While we're on this subject - an old Kinetics EtherPort II card which has been at our dealers under repair for over a year has now been returned.... as an new Shiva EtherPort II card (not the same thing at all!). Does anyone know where I can FTP an A/UX driver for this card, or do I have to try explaining things to my dealer? -- % William Roberts Internet: liam@dcs.qmw.ac.uk % Queen Mary & Westfield College UUCP: liam@qmw-dcs.UUCP % Mile End Road Telephone: +44 71 975 5234 % LONDON, E1 4NS, UK Fax: +44 81-980 6533
tony@tui.marcam.dsir.govt.nz (Tony Cooper) (06/19/91)
In article <3371@redstar.dcs.qmw.ac.uk>, liam@dcs.qmw.ac.uk (William Roberts;) writes: |> The 16K vs 64K issue is related to Apple's own cards (the old style ones). I |> can't recall what I said at the time, except that the 64K card made a |> significant difference to the NFS benchmarks I ran, but the eventual facts |> |> >If the Tri-Data board compares well with the Asante on these three points |> >then it's a good card. I won't swear to it but I think I found that FTP |> >between a Mac IIfx and a Sun IPC ran at about 110KB/sec with the Asante. |> >Assuming that the IPC is as fast as the Sun 3, the Tri-Data may have an |> >edge over the Asante. (Then again, that may be a very poor assumption.) |> I have an early ethernet card (1988 I don't know which rev) so I presume that it is 16K. FTP between my MacII and a Sun IPC runs at 243K per second (a half megabyte file copying mostly memory to memory). So this card is no slouch. The fastest I could ever do when at Stanford was about 70K per second. So I'd say that the load on the network is far more important than the speed of the card. Our network here has two suns, a Mac, and a few VAX/VMS machines all sharing files left and right. The Vaxes put out a lot of DECNET crap continually. So even our network is not quiet. I'm sure Apple will support the 16K cards for quite a while. There is no reason not to. Cheers, Tony Cooper sramtrc@albert.dsir.govt.nz