Unidentified PDS ethernet card

[cgp]

I've just successfully restored an IIsi (detailed discussion posted on TinkerDifferent) but the machine has an unidentified PDS ethernet adapter. The card isn't recognized by Apple network code or by NetBSD. Its vendor code is 0x0410 which might be Sonics Systems, Inc .. but I've found no driver of theirs to work.

Does anyone recognize this card?

 

[eharmon]

I've just successfully restored an IIsi (detailed discussion posted on TinkerDifferent) but the machine has an unidentified PDS ethernet adapter. The card isn't recognized by Apple network code or by NetBSD. Its vendor code is 0x0410 which might be Sonics Systems, Inc .. but I've found no driver of theirs to work.

Does anyone recognize this card?

SSI stickers on the chips confirms this is a Sonic Systems card.

Dumping the ROM would reveal more.

 

[obsolete]

I have a similar card in my SE/30. I believe it works with the Asante driver; that would be worth a try.

 

[mdeverhart]

This site has drivers for some Sonic Systems cards:

Mac Driver Museum: Network Card Drivers

 

[cgp]

I have a similar card in my SE/30. I believe it works with the Asante driver; that would be worth a try.

Thanks. I haven't tried the Asante driver. I'll give it a (them) a go.

 

[cgp]

This site has drivers for some Sonic Systems cards:

Mac Driver Museum: Network Card Drivers

That's an excellent site. I tried Sonic Systems EtherLAN 6.1 Drivers but no joy. And Sonic Systems EtherLAN 7.8 Drivers is sadly unusable: incomplete or corrupt.

 

[cgp]

And Sonic Systems EtherLAN 7.8 Drivers is sadly unusable: incomplete or corrupt.

Tried another machine and got a good copy. Don't the love floppies
No driver match for the card found though.

 

[obsolete]

Thanks. I haven't tried the Asante driver. I'll give it a (them) a go.

It's the same controller chip as an Asante MacCon so that would be the one to try.

 

[cgp]

SSI stickers on the chips confirms this is a Sonic Systems card.

Dumping the ROM would reveal more.

I wasn't sure about reading the ROM directly from the host, so I pulled the chip. It turned out to be a DM74LS417N which is a 256byte TTL device that's far too ancient for my TL866ii+ to understand! So some fakery was required to approximate it to a familiar 1kb 2716:

But I got a dump:
So, as suspected, it's a Sonic Systems card. Can the model id be devined?

 

[cgp]

It's the same controller chip as an Asante MacCon so that would be the one to try.

I've tried the driver from the Asante 5.1 release with System 7.1 but the card isn't seen. And standard Apple code should recognize MacCon anyway .. the MacCon in my SE/30 is.

 

[Melkhior]

Do you have a SE/30 to test the PDS card in? The PDS of the SE/30 and IIsi are essentially compatible, but the faster clock of the IIsi (20 MHz vs. 16 MHz) means some card for the SE/30 won't work reliably in the IIsi - enough for the Mac to fail reading the ROM properly. This could be one of those - though the form factor is very compact and does suggest it was designed for the IIsi.

Have you confirmed with an utility like TattleTech that the Slot Manager properly sees the device? If yes then it's likely really a driver problem, if no then the issue lies elsewhere.

 

[cgp]

Do you have a SE/30 to test the PDS card in?

I do have an SE/30 with a good Asante card installed. I'm reluctant to disturb it, though, since I'm not sure what can be learned that's not already known.

Have you confirmed with an utility like TattleTech that the Slot Manager properly sees the device? If yes then it's likely really a driver problem, if no then the issue lies elsewhere.

Yup. TattleTach and friends all see the card and confirm it to be a Sonic. And 16Kb of device RAM is seen.

Yet no installer I've yet found - Sonic 7.8 or Asante 5.6.1 or Farallon - matches. And the Sonic 6.1 installer crashes.

 

[cheesestraws]

the form factor is very compact and does suggest it was designed for the IIsi

FWIW I have a card that is specifically marketed for the SE/30 that is this size (I haven't tried it in a IIsi), so I'm not sure this is a safe conclusion

 

[halkyardo]

To make sure that the ROM is being read correctly, this tool will dump all your slot ROMs to files https://www.gryphel.com/c/minivmac/extras/slotrom/ - might be worthwhile to make sure that that dump matches up to the one you took 'externally.'

Since your card is based around the same DP8390 controller as the ubiquitous EtherLink NB and MacCon cards, if you were feeling *really* brave you might be able to figure out how the chip is mapped into memory by poking at it in MacsBug, and then modify Glenn Anderson's open-source driver (https://mactcp.org/ethernet.html) to talk to your particular card.

 

[olePigeon]

@cgp Here's the original one you linked to. It mounted with Shrinkwrap, so I converted it to Disk Copy.

 

[cgp]

@cheesestraws I'm now sure that this card is from the "Sonic Ethernet Series". Trawling MacWorld's from 92/93, I see a number of models for various Macs .. but no PDS versions for IIsi or SE/30 specifically. Does your card work on an SE/30, and if so using what driver?

@halkyardo Thanks for those links. I've interacted with Glenn previously and I'll give his driver a try. And contemplate diddling with it .. though I may experiment with a NetBSD driver for which I have more experience.

@olePigeon Thanks for the image - I'll try that also.

 

[cheesestraws]

@cheesestraws I'm now sure that this card is from the "Sonic Ethernet Series". Trawling MacWorld's from 92/93, I see a number of models for various Macs .. but no PDS versions for IIsi or SE/30 specifically. Does your card work on an SE/30, and if so using what driver?

Sorry, I think I may have been unclear - mine isn't a Sonic card, I was just cautioning against @Melkhior's correlating what card the machine was intended for vs. what physical size the card is.

But building a card around the 8390 ahd then making it not compatible with Asante and Apple's drivers is antisocial >:-/

 

[halkyardo]

But building a card around the 8390 ahd then making it not compatible with Asante and Apple's drivers is antisocial >:-/

There seem to be a few cases of this! Somewhat surprising (and annoying) in hindsight I suppose, but having looked long and hard at the 3Com/Apple/Asante design, there are some fairly strong arguments for not doing things the way they did (especially for a PDS-only card that doesn't need to be compatible with NuBus).

 

[cheesestraws]

There seem to be a few cases of this! Somewhat surprising (and annoying) in hindsight I suppose, but having looked long and hard at the 3Com/Apple/Asante design, there are some fairly strong arguments for not doing things the way they did (especially for a PDS-only card that doesn't need to be compatible with NuBus).

oh, I'm sure there were, I'm just being grumpy tonight...

 

[cgp]

To make sure that the ROM is being read correctly, this tool will dump all your slot ROMs to files https://www.gryphel.com/c/minivmac/extras/slotrom/ - might be worthwhile to make sure that that dump matches up to the one you took 'externally.'

I've confirmed that my PROM read is identical to the slotrom dump.

@eharmon I've also used your ROM Fiend extensions to HexFiend to see that many of slotrom's debugging messages make sense.