We's gettin' Cable! YAY!!!!

[StevieC]

So not quite the 8mps as advertised... But this is much better than my old old "susceptible to weather" microwave internet connection. New: Old:

 

[brianl703]

I can't complain, though Comcast hasn't officially said anything about the increased upload speeds that I know of.

 

[OVERKILL]

 Originally Posted By: brianl703

There's two versions of the 3C905C. One has a big chip, one has a small chip. This is the one with the big chip that says BROADCOM on it: http://farm1.static.flickr.com/28/37975076_7ebdd29718.jpg?v=0

That's a C, my two are CX's. Just noticed that. I've never seen the card you posted. And that's says a lot, given I've seen THOUSANDS of NIC's in the last 20 years. Funny note: When I went from the 905B to the 905C, the C's all had the small chips on them. I'm wondering if we didn't get the revision you've posted in Canada. If so, that would explain why I've never seen one. And your 10Mbit issue is not new to me, I've seen that before. I had a B that developed the same issue. But it worked PERFECTLY in 100Mbit, so I continued to use it in an FTP dump system, hehe If you look closely at my pictures, you will note that the 509-TPO main chip is an AT&T sourced product. EDIT: Can you take a better picture of that NIC? What's the date of manufacture on it?

 

[OVERKILL]

Hey, WIKI has a pic of the plane-jane 905!

 

[brianl703]

I didn't take the picture, although I have one of the Broadcom ones at work, if it hasn't hit the trashcan yet I could look for a date of manufacture.

 

[OVERKILL]

 Originally Posted By: brianl703

I didn't take the picture, although I have one of the Broadcom ones at work, if it hasn't hit the trashcan yet I could look for a date of manufacture.

Please do, it would interest me.

 

[brianl703]

Looks like that card was made in 2000/2001..the one I looked at was made at the beginning of 2001, based on the datecode on one of the chips. I just got another PCI-X 133MHz dual Intel gigabit NIC. It's in the box that will replace my existing Linux server. That box does have a PCI-X 133MHz slot (3 in fact), although the NIC will operate in a 32-bit 33MHz slot if there's room for the extra connectors (no parts in the way on the motherboard). (The Sun X1034 cards are PCI-X cards, but I think they only operate at 66MHz). The server motherboard was a closeout special for $50 with free shipping from Newegg. I put a 3GHz P4 in it (which was a trashcan special because the motherboard it was one was flaky). The motherboard takes DDR2 memory, I wouldn't have bothered with it if it only took DDR memory due to the 3x extra cost for DDR memory.

 

[RWEST]

Still on my tin cans on strings, at home, in the boondocks. Not much chance of any type of upgrade, since our little 'burg is about 6 miles from any semblance of a metro area, and nobody has shown even the slightest interest in bringing 21st century technology to us. We're looking at Wild Blue and HughesNet, but, they ain't cheap. At work, we have a T-1. Gives me a good reason to show up!!

 

[OVERKILL]

 Originally Posted By: brianl703

Looks like that card was made in 2000/2001..the one I looked at was made at the beginning of 2001, based on the datecode on one of the chips. I just got another PCI-X 133MHz dual Intel gigabit NIC. It's in the box that will replace my existing Linux server. That box does have a PCI-X 133MHz slot (3 in fact), although the NIC will operate in a 32-bit 33MHz slot if there's room for the extra connectors (no parts in the way on the motherboard). (The Sun X1034 cards are PCI-X cards, but I think they only operate at 66MHz). The server motherboard was a closeout special for $50 with free shipping from Newegg. I put a 3GHz P4 in it (which was a trashcan special because the motherboard it was one was flaky). The motherboard takes DDR2 memory, I wouldn't have bothered with it if it only took DDR memory due to the 3x extra cost for DDR memory.

Interesting. I saw probably the most 3C905x NIC's of my life during that time period (I was at UNB) and didn't see any like that! Maybe my speculation is right? We didn't get those ones up here? Always possible I suppose. What's in the box for a board?

 

[brianl703]

 Originally Posted By: OVERK1LL

Maybe my speculation is right? We didn't get those ones up here? Always possible I suppose. What's in the box for a board?

Could be--I've only seen them in recent times in piles of leftover hardware, during that era I was mainly using the Kingston KNE100TX cards. The server has a Tyan Tomcat i7230W motherboard. It has 2 onboard gigabit nics. I have a Sun X1034 card in it, plus the Intel dual gigabit card, so it has 4 10/100 and 4 10/100/1000 ports for a total of 8 ports. No, I don't know what I'm going to do with all of those ports. (I did not use a ATX EPS 12V power supply--which has an 8 pin connector instead of the 4 pin connector. I just got an adapter to convert the 4 pin to an 8 pin connector and used a normal ATX 12V power supply, with the 24 pin connector). The Sun X1034 (aka Sun QFE -- note that there is an Sbus version of the Sun QFE, with a different model number, which doesn't have a prayer of working in an X86 machine for what should hopefully be obvious reasons):

 

[StevieC]

I thought they did away with ISA slots.... (J/K)

 

[OVERKILL]

THAT is a pimp card! The last ASUS server board I used (last year) had quad Intel Gigabit on-board. Using teaming, I've found the throughput to be fantastic!!!

 

[brianl703]

Ebay item # 110394132019 is a buy it now for the 3com card with the Broadcom chip if you want one for your collection. Buy it now price is $2.99

 

[StevieC]

 Originally Posted By: brianl703

Ebay item # 110394132019 is a buy it now for the 3com card with the Broadcom chip if you want one for your collection. Buy it now price is $2.99

That's too much! You gotta do it OVERK1LL, then you can open your own 905 Museum.

 

[PandaBear]

Back in 95 we were hunting down ISA NE2000 compatible card with coax connector all over the place. Why? We starving college students were building a dorm network to play Warcraft 2 and to share a dedicated modem phone line. Hub (not even switch) were expensive and is difficult to route for 8 rooms across the building, and made the coax cable a great choice. All it takes is one cable across the roof to the other side, a few Ts, and 2 terminators. Until someone is stupid and disconnect his PC the wrong way, and split the network in half. We brought this setup into our apartments next year and the cable guy though we were stealing cable TV, and cut it.

 

[StevieC]

I remember those days... I have a couple NE-2000 compatible ISA network adapters with hardware IRQ and I/O Address jumpers. I used them in my 386 and 486 with Lantastic and Windows 3.1! Much faster than a null-modem connection and Norton Commander!

 

[brianl703]

I had SMC Elite 16 cards back then. Still have them in my pile. These were better than NE2000 clones because they used shared memory and were a little faster because of it. On the downside, that made them a little difficult to get working on PCI systems.

 

[StevieC]

This is what my card looked like only it was a clone and not Netware Certified.

 

[brianl703]

If you peeled that "YES" sticker off, it had a UMC logo under it. Nearly all the cheap ISA NE2000 clones in the mid-90s used that same UMC chip..

 

[StevieC]

I dunno... Was so long ago and I was only a teenie bopper then so I didn't care much!