• 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.

Etherport SE

raoulduke

Well-known member
I just bought an SE ethernet card here.  I've tried some stuff.  It's installed as is 6.0.8 and NSI 1.4.4 in a 1mb 800k SE.  The Network Control Panel sees both Appletalk and Ethertalk.  I don't know if the latter is the card.  The PDS part is Novell and the port part is Kinetics EtherPort.  Documentation I found suggests that really doesn't matter and these all shared drivers with Shiva/Kinetics/Dayna.  I don't know if someone can contradict that.

But really I'm just grasping in the dark.  I've tried reinstalling the system > NSI > Dayna, and the hardware diagnostics included with its drivers alternatively doesn't recognize any card or forces a restart.  Likewise, trying to select it in the Network CP also generally forces a restart.  The Shiva drivers consistently give an illegal instruction error while trying to boot.

It's also possible I'm missing a major step in this process...

 
Last edited by a moderator:

Elfen

Well-known member
EtherPort on the Control Panel is the Ethernet card. It has AppleTalk Protocol running through the Ethernet. Under System 6, it is the only way to get Ethernet On System 6. Things get better with System 7.1 and 7.5 as you can have networking with Ethernet with Apple Talk Off.

 

raoulduke

Well-known member
Ok, but as I mentioned, the System will not remain stable through attempting to use it.  This is an 800k 1mb SE, so System 7 can be ruled out.  The Shiva drivers just abjectly prevent the system from booting.  What I'm increasingly curious about is whether this is a problem with the card or whether it might be a processor issue [just curious].  I will try it on an SE/30 eventually if nobody has thoughts on this build.

Slots gave me an unimplemented trap and I'm really not familiar with any PDS tools (including Slots - if that's what that is).

All the documentation I'm seeing is for SE/30s.  I haven't found a working example with an SE [i don't think].  Shiva bought the card line from Novell in 1990, so I wonder if I'm not looking for an extremely obscure version of this driver - notwithstanding technical System 6 compatibility [the Shiva drivers are explicitly okay for System 6].  But the only stuff I can find for Novell is documentation.

 
Last edited by a moderator:

Elfen

Well-known member
My guess is that the Shiva Drivers seem to be using '030 CPU opcodes to be giving you illegal instruction error. You would need an older driver that would be the SE version.

I thought that SE and SE\30 cards could not fit into each other's slots. So I'm guessing that you cant use it on the SE\30. And mixed parts is not always a good thing. One switched pin and you could blow the expansion card or even the logic board. So somebody got lucky but that does not mean its perfect either. If the Rv/Tx lines are crossed, then the card would act like its deaf and mute on the network though it is otherwise OK.

Q: Does the card have a ROM on it? If it does it might not need a driver.

Q2: What other extensions are you running, and what of the system itself - how much RAM? 1MB? Nevermind, I see it. Sometimes an Extensions Conflict can be harder to find when it looks like its the hardware. The Shiva Drivers should be OK for System 6 but if there is another extension bumping with it, its hard to say. Question is which one? Try it without the Shiva Drivers  and see what happens.

 

raoulduke

Well-known member
That was basically my question, which is odd though because both cards say "SE."  So I think it's purely a software issue.  SE/30 also uses PDS.  Not sure about the ROM, but since driver issues are widely reported for this set of cards, I assume it needs drivers.

The System is barebones.  Responder and Iomega's Zip driver are the only two others - and I wasn't using the Zip driver when I first got the error.

Does anyone know what Novell LAN Workplace 3.5 is or where I can find it?

 

raoulduke

Well-known member
*But the PDS slot is different on the SE/30, so that isn't going to work.  So it's either earlier drivers or major upgrades.

 

raoulduke

Well-known member
I might have overcomplicated that.  It would appear to work - and I say appear because I don't actually have a DA-15 to RJ45 transceiver yet and then I may need a hub; I forget if I have one.

It seems that you cannot install NSI or the drivers conflict (probably particularly AppleTalk).  If you install the Shiva drivers noted above on a clean install of 6.0.8, the card seems to enable properly.  But I can't do further testing now.

 
Top