• Updated 2023-07-12: Hello, Guest! Welcome back, and be sure to check out this follow-up post about our outage a week or so ago.

Ethernet CS II issues

techknight

Well-known member
I have a 5400/6400 180. 

I did a fresh install of 7.6, and it has an apple ethernet CS II card in it. 

Soon as it gets done on the install, it reboots, I go to TCP/IP and it complains saying "Ethernet" is no longer available, and it only gives me the 2 serial ports. 

Odd, so I tried another CS II card and it did the same thing. 

I tried installing Mac OS 8, Same deal...

any thoughts? Yes the Apple Ethernet CS II extension gets installed, but no others. 

 
Last edited by a moderator:

techknight

Well-known member
Motherboard is fucked. 

Grabbed a crapper 6400 board and it actually picked up the Ethernet and worked. 

But the board I have that wont work is 180Mhz, the one that does is 120Mhz. So, I need to figure out WHY it doesnt work. 

 

beachycove

Well-known member
The 6400 was only issued in 180 and 200mhz variants, so presumably this isn't a 6400 l.b.

7.6 was notoriously buggy on the 6400, as I recall. In fact, I seem to recall something especially buggy about the comm slot.... I think I'd install OS8 and see if that improves life.

 

techknight

Well-known member
7.6 was notoriously buggy on the 6400, as I recall. In fact, I seem to recall something especially buggy about the comm slot.... I think I'd install OS8 and see if that improves life.
And it did not. And I meant to say 5400 and not 6400. Whoops. I get the two mixed up all the time because the motherboards are so easily changeable. 

 

CharlesT

Well-known member
Just thought I'd throw out another possibility, though a wild shot. Does the 5400 board use appreciably less power than the original? I'm fighting a similar issue on an LC575 (but don't have mo-bo's to swap). Looked at the 5V during power up with and without the comm slot card installed. Noticed it drops very close to 4.5V for a bit with the card installed, not below 4.7V without. I'm suspecting a weak power supply and am re-capping it. And keeping my fingers crossed. Can't believe that comm slot card draws much current, but if the supply is marginal... 

 

rsolberg

Well-known member
Both boards use 603e CPUs, so if all else is equal, and the CPUs are of the same mask revision, the one clocked at 180MHz will consume more power than the one at 120MHz. The difference will be small, in the order of about 1.5w, but maybe that's enough?

 

techknight

Well-known member
Nope. Again, I have 3 motherboards. 

2 of them are 120Mhz, The original is 180Mhz. 

The original nor one of the 120Mhz boards worked with either of my CS II cards. 

So I grabbed a "spare parts" 120Mhz board and that one DID work. 

So I can only assume motherboard, but again I dont know for certain. So it has nothing to do with CPU speeds here. 

As far as 5V stability, that I dont know, I can test it. 

 
Last edited by a moderator:

tappdarden

Well-known member
Have you ever figured this out?

I'm having similar problems with a TAM.

and starting to wonder if its the motherboard (or power supply?)

 

Franklinstein

Well-known member
I installed System 7.5.5 on a Performa 5420 (using a 120MHz variant of the Alchemy board) with the same result: The Apple CS II Ethernet card was not available and nothing would see it. I had to reinstall the 54xx/64xx Update from Apple and it included a couple of PCI Network-related extensions (among a few others), which resulted in the Ethernet card coming back into service.

Maybe try finding a copy of 54xx/64xx Update and/or use OS 8.5 or newer? The TAM and 55/65xx boards are slightly different (they're faster Gazelle boards, not Alchemy), as is the LC 575, so I have no idea what to do with those.

 
Top