Apple PCI Ethernet Card that I never knew existed

[sailingdarter]

So the title says it all,

I came across an Apple branded Ethernet card that had BNC, AAUI and Twisted Pair ports that was PCI based.



I am honestly surprised, I thought that the first Apple Branded PCI Ethernet card was produced right around the dawn of the G3 era and was only notable because it was Fast Ethernet as opposed the the onboard 10BaseT ethernet on the G3 Motherboard, But this card is really interesting.

Looks like this card is only 10Mbps only. So I guess this card was sold for those for Server use cases so those machines could have multiple interfaces but still have the benefit of only using Apple drivers. Because other than that I am not sure why any PCI PowerMac consumer user would get this card if they already had AAUI 10Mbps ethernet on the motherboard. Perhaps for PCI based Mac Clones with no motherboard Ethernet? I am also honestly curious why Apple would bother with AAUI on this card when it had BNC and twisted pair on it already. Was there a 10Base5 Adaptor for AAUI?

Anyone know anything more about this card?

 

[Mk.558]

Interesting card, you are right.

It was probably to work with existing setups, and probably didn't sell much. The only AAUI adapters I've heard of are 10BASE-T and 10BASE-2, and the latter is uncommon, haven't seen much of them.

 

[Big Ben]

Oh boy. I think it’s the unobtenium PCI Ethernet 10Mbits for the Apple Network Server

EDIT: it is. Not designated in the manual but solder points match perfectly.

 

[sailingdarter]

Oh boy. I think it’s the unobtenium PCI Ethernet 10Mbits for the Apple Network Server

EDIT: it is. Not designated in the manual but solder points match perfectly.

If this is the case, I wonder if this card is AIX only.

I am temped to try it out in one of my PCI PowerMac machines running OS 8 to see if it will even work on Classic Mac OS. Anything that I should be aware of before I do?

 

[Big Ben]

It’s the same DEC ethernet chip you can found on an ethernet CSII card.
I guess it should work!

I’m setting up an alert on ebay for this card P/N, maybe I’ll find one while I fix my ANS

 

[sailingdarter]

I’m setting up an alert on ebay for this card P/N, maybe I’ll find one while I fix my ANS

Im curious, did the ANS manual not list the part number as an accessory? I recently got this one on eBay because I was looking for an Apple branded Ethernet card for one of my SuperMac Clone machines that did not have onboard Ethernet (got sick of LocalTalk speeds) and I did not want to muck around with 3rd party drivers and this seemed like period appropriate.

I had no idea that this was that rare.

And even then I am still confused why AAUI is on that card

 

[Big Ben]

It’s not listed under the same reference.

Service manual indicates M4709Z/A.

 

[NJRoadfan]

Its the world's most generic PCI Ethernet card, the DEC Tulip. Supported by virtually all OSes and emulated by all fine virtual machines everywhere.