Ethernet Switch for Compacts

[Johnnya101]

Hello,

Since I have not been Ethernet working with any of my compacts, I think I am going to need an Ethernet switch.

Can anyone recommend one they use? I'm thinking of maybe the Netgear FS108 10/100 Switch which I saw in an eBay ad with an SE/30...

 

[Unknown_K]

Any old 3COM should work.

 

[joethezombie]

I use a Cisco Catalyst 1924.  Overkill, sure, but it was free and it is fun to login and see the statistics.

 

[Gorgonops]

One advantage to using an old Catalyst or other "managed" switch is if you run into one of those edge cases where your older machine doesn't get along with auto-sensing ports or full duplex you can use the CLI to dumb down the port to make it work. Situations like that aren't *terribly* uncommon with ethernet cards made before the mid-1990's.

 

[Johnnya101]

Awesome. Thanks guys! So I should have no problem ordering one of these right? Is got tons of ports which is nice.

 

[joethezombie]

If you're talking about the catalyst, you can get them on eBay for fairly cheap, but like I said I just found mine for free. I should tell you though, the fan in those guys is a loud high-pitched shrill. Not ear-friendly at all!

 

[Johnnya101]

No I'm talking about the thing in my first post, as there's a few cheaply on eBay now.

 

[Johnnya101]

What about this one?

http://m.ebay.com/itm/WS-C1924C-EN-Cisco-Catalyst-24-port-switch-w-1-100FX-and-1-100TX-Uplink-/371860712492?nav=WATCHING_ACTIVE

So I plug it in, plug in to my router then my SE/30, and it will work? And how would I log in and see those statistics?

 

[Unknown_K]

Managed switches generally have a serial port you use a terminal to get into (null modem cable needed). Venders also offer apps that will give you graphical controls.

The older 10/100 managed switches I have from 3com have an app called 3COM Network Supervisor.

I suggested 3com mostly because everything works with them, they were for a long time the standard switch/hub most places used.

 

[Johnnya101]

Think you can link yours with me? That would be really helpful, as I want to get something other users have on here so I know it works!

 

[rsolberg]

The best "plug it in and it will work" devices for this application are 10Base-T hubs or switches. Many Ethernet cards for 68k Macs do not play nicely with 10/100 and 10/100/1000 switches as they fail autonegotiation with those switches. You can get a managed switch and manually configure one or more ports for 10mbps half duplex as others have said, or the easiest solution is to get a hub or switch that's 10Base-T only. I have a Netgear EN104TP that works great for me. Here's another make and model of 10Base-T hub that's available new for $9.99 with free shipping: Look at this on eBay http://www.ebay.com/itm/351825622296

 

[redrouteone]

If you want a managed switch for cheap, I'm a fan of the Netgear ProSAFE line. You'll want the ones that start with GS.

Here is a 5 Port for $30. https://www.amazon.com/NETGEAR-ProSAFE-GS105Ev2-Gigabit-Managed/dp/B00HGLVZLY/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1486610522&sr=8-3&keywords=netgear+prosafe+5+port

Though I have seen them on sale at Fry's for about $20.

 

[Boctor]

I'm also curious about switches and transceivers, many people here seem to know more about them than myself. My SE/30 has an Asante card (MacCon 30ie) with thinnet and thicknet (AUI), but my AUI-to-RJ45 transceiver box (E-TBT-MC05) is proving a nuisance, even with OpenTransport 1.3. I have it plugged into a Netgear 10/100 switch, and I've tried various other 10Mbit-compatible switches, but the router simply won't shake hands with the SE/30. I have tried assigning a valid static IP to my rather odd MAC address, which begins with four zeroes and contains no alphabetical characters.

Currently, my OT 1.3 settings have 192.168.1.1 as the router address, 255.255.255.0 as the subnet mask, and 192.168.1.130 as the manually-assigned IP address for the computer. Any help is greatly appreciated; I feel like I'm missing something between the AUI transciever and the router. I hope this is okay to post here, as I didn't think starting a whole new thread for 10Mbit switches would be appropriate.

 

[Unknown_K]

3com 3300 switches work well for me (Superstack II I think they are called).

 

[Johnnya101]

This is what I wanted! I think I'll just go with the tbase hub, it's cheap and worth a try!!!

 

[nvdeynde]

I'm using old 3Com OfficeConnect Hub 8C or 16c. This is a pure 10 Mbps hub with a BNC connector as well.
It's overkill to get a 10/100 Mbps switch or Hub as the Compact Macs are too slow to even get 10 Mbps speed. 

Switches is trial and error, 10/100 Mbps can work sometimes but 10/100/1000 don't ( tested 3Com, HP Procurve and Asus without luck ).

So I would suggest to look for a 3Com OfficeConnect 10 Mbps Hub: they go to 16 ports if you need that many.

 

[Unknown_K]

I used to use officeconnect hubs until switches got dirt cheap (and I needed 24 or more ports). If you only have a couple machines connected and only do transfers between 2 machines at a time then a hub is fine (10mb is shared bandwidth), but when you want full duplex with full speed 10/100 on each port you need a switch.

I dig out the officeconnect hub when I need coax from an old relic PC (still have my cables and connectors from the early 90's when it was all you had).

 

[mrpippy]

I've used my SE/30 and a IIci (both with Asante cards) with a cheap Asus RT-N10P router running TomatoUSB as a wireless client. The IIci wouldn't correctly autodetect to 10 Mbps, but I was able to use a command-line tool on the router (robocfg) to force it to 10/full-duplex.

If you buy a router/switch that can run OpenWRT or a similar open-source firmware, you should have enough control over the switch ports to set speed/duplex.

 

[rsolberg]

I've tried the OpenWRT route myself as well, and it does work nicely once configured.  I discovered that DD-WRT and Tomato were unable to change the speed/duplex settings on the particular hardware revision of my WRT-54GL routers -- apparently my routers have a slightly different ethernet switch that is not fully supported in most stable DD-WRT and Tomato WRT-54 builds.  The requisite software component makes the image too large to fit into the router's flash memory.  OpenWRT didn't work out of the box either, but at least it left enough space in flash to install robocfg and the driver.  I wasn't able to get my Asante MCLC card to link unless I set the ports to 10/half duplex though.  Full duplex was a no-go.