Re: Ethernet card?

[mhackett@alpha.vaxxine.com (Michael Hackett)]

Marc Sira (toh@freenet.Victoria.BC.CA) wrote:
> In our last episode, mvgfr@netcom.com (Marc Farnum Rendino) said:
>
> >I meant to mention another idea. I'm sure I'm not the first, but maybe
> >it's time to think about it again - SCSI Ethernet boxes. The code to
> >use one on a IIGS (or maybe even a IIe!) shouldn't be that different
> >than on a Mac.
> >
> >Thoughts?
>
> I think this is the way to go. I have an Asant� Mini EN/SC that I
> bought for under $50, and drivers for it on my Powerbook Duo. [...]
> I haven't yet contacted Asante about technical information, but this is my
> plan. If they turn out to be recalcitrant about giving this out, there are
> other several other companies who make similar adaptors (Dayna, possibly
> Farallon, and others).

I contact Asante, Farallon, Dayna, and Focus, and got nothing from any of
them. If I recall, Asante was the one that =seemed= willing at first to
give out the information, but I never heard back from them, and then I
couldn't even get them to return a call. I have Dayna's driver that I
started to disassemble, but never got around to finishing. It's still
something on my list of things to do, but it has slipped down in priority.
I wish you luck if you try the same. I would be interested in such a
driver. BTW, although Dayna said their device's protocol was proprietary,
there is a section in the SCSI-2 docs for Ethernet adaptors that gives you
the standard calls if any are actually supported. (Even if the device is
not SCSI-2, it might support some calls in at least a similar fashion.)

> The only issue I can think of with such a driver on the GS is that the
> Ramfast appears to have specific device support built into the ROM, and
> this might interfere with an unexpected device like a communications
> adaptor. The more generic Apple HS SCSI might be better suited, though I'm
> sure it has its own issues.

Yes, this has always been my biggest complaint about the RamFast, that it
has no generic device interface (or so I've been told), so it only
supports the devices the ROM knows about, and at this point an update from
Sequential seems unlikely. I think the Apple card would support the
Ethernet adaptors fine with a suitable driver.

> I can actually think of one other issue - the Appletalk support on the GS
> is likely to be totally tied to the Localtalk port, so providing Ethertalk
> support with a third-party driver might be tricky. Basically the problem is
> that this might require rewriting much of the GSOS networking code from the
> ground up, to get a nice layered network model you can work with. Perhaps
> someone familiar with how Localtalk is done on the GS could comment?

Could be, I didn't get that far.

> I don't know how much I can offer in the way of writing an actual GS driver
> for this thing, but I think I do have a good chance of sussing out the API
> for Linux, and I'd be happy to give anything I come up with to a GS
> developer. All I need now is time to work on it. :O

Getting the protocol documented would be a good first step at least.

-- 
Michael Hackett
Some Assembly Required