Need help getting Ethernet/Internet on my PM6500

[Swabbie]

Bought a Realtek RTL8139D NIC card for my PCI slot on advice that that card will run on PB&J if you stick it in.

Installed it.

Got a green LED saying I’ve got power. System profiler sees the card.

Card name: pci3030 ,5032.
Card model and rom: not available.
Card revision: 16.
Card vendor: 10DEC.

Found and installed the Driver https://macintoshgarden.org/apps/re...clrtl8101lrtl8139cl-rtl8139clrtl8139dlrtl8100

I want to point out here that the readme on the driver gives me concern. It says to confirm the card vendor and name match the following: 10 DEC and 8139. My vendor ID is DEC10 but my 4 digit card name was not “8139”. It says if they don’t match then find a driver where they do OR PATCH THE DRIVER. Then it gives into this long (scary) process to do that.

Wondering if this is a truly relevant or not.

you can read the whole thing here https://pastebin.com/n5iiUNme

Connected my NIC card to LAN jack on my FiOS router via standard Ethernet cable.

Launched TCP/IP from the control panel.

I get this alert: “The previously selected connection “Ethernet” is not available. The connection has been changed to “AppleTalk (MacIP)”

That sounds bad.

My choices are connect via apple talk or PPP. As it warned, no Ethernet option!

Fired up classilla just to be sure. Yep. No connectivity. No activity lights in NIC card.

Running OS 9.1

I will also say ever since installing this card & driver the system has been acting up. Lots of crashes. Slow. EXAMPLE: Unstuffing a 79MB .SIT took 2 hours! Etc.

Now h’what.

 

[alectrona2988]

For those computers you will need an ethernet card that can go to the comm slot if I'm correct. Unfortunately, they are super hard to find... I'm looking for one myself.

 

[Swabbie]

For those computers you will need an ethernet card that can go to the comm slot if I'm correct. Unfortunately, they are super hard to find... I'm looking for one myself.

Oh I definitely know they are the preferred option but too rich for my blood 🫣.

I know I’ve read that PCI cards can work too but there’s not a lot of info out there on it. I’m hoping this $20 solution works vs $200 to $300!

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[alectrona2988]

Yikes. I'm planning to put a Radeon 7000 into my 6360 yet also have some form of ethernet connection. Not sure if that'll play out at all...

 

[CircuitBored]

For those computers you will need an ethernet card that can go to the comm slot if I'm correct.

Nope, any PCI ethernet card with Mac drivers will do. A fast PCI card absolutely annihilates the CSII card in raw performance.

@Swabbie I would recommend the Realtek 8169 rather than the 8139. The 8169 is extremely common and dirt cheap. Don't be intimidated by having to edit drivers to get it to work, it's just a matter of using a binary editor to search for and replace the vendor ID. It's no harder than doing a find and replace with word processor. I recommend Quadrivio's "General Edit Lite" for doing this. Sadly, you just have to bite the bullet and do it the "hard" way.

I can send you a bundle of files that'll help you get an 8169 running on OS9 if you decide to go down that route.

 

[alectrona2988]

Ahh, daaang. I love how small the 6360 is but the market for that didn't intend for much expansion. Might be looking out for a Power Macintosh G3 soon.

 

[Swabbie]

Nope, any PCI ethernet card with Mac drivers will do. A fast PCI card absolutely annihilates the CSII card in raw performance.

@Swabbie I would recommend the Realtek 8169 rather than the 8139. The 8169 is extremely common and dirt cheap. Don't be intimidated by having to edit drivers to get it to work, it's just a matter of using a binary editor to search for and replace the vendor ID. It's no harder than doing a find and replace with word processor. I recommend Quadrivio's "General Edit Lite" for doing this. Sadly, you just have to bite the bullet and do it the "hard" way.

I can send you a bundle of files that'll help you get an 8169 running on OS9 if you decide to go down that route.

Ok. Well that gives me hope & courage. Thanks for that!

I will seek out an 8169.

Do the letters after 8169 matter? I see 8169, 8169S & 8169SC as options on eBay.

that said, why on earth would my TCP/IP no longer have Ethernet as an option? Would a faulty driver delete that somehow AND make my system slow as hell and crashy? Seems a stretch that a wrong 4 digit number in a driver could cause all that.

I will most definitely be interested in any files you can offer once I get the card in.

 

[CircuitBored]

Do the letters after 8169 matter? I see 8169, 8169S & 8169SC as options on eBay.

As far as I'm aware they do not. I have an 8169 and an 8169SC and they both work with the same drivers.

that said, why on earth would my TCP/IP no longer have Ethernet as an option? Would a faulty driver delete that somehow AND make my system slow as hell and crashy? Seems a stretch that a wrong 4 digit number in a driver could cause all that.

Yes, that sounds exactly like the behaviour I experienced when I first attempted to edit the drivers (I missed one instance of the vendor ID value). The machine will bog down and do some truly ridiculous things. As I understand it, TCP/IP is always doing "stuff" in the background on OS 9 and a bad driver file will throw a real spanner in the works.

I will most definitely be interested in any files you can offer once I get the card in.

I can probably coach you through most of the patching process when the time comes. I can sling you a copy of General Edit Lite too.

 

[Byrd]

Try another 8139; notably the “C” designation. They were all horribly cheap NICs so can take a bit of trial and error to find one that works out of the box with the OS 9 drivers.

 

[cheesestraws]

Yes, manage your expectations here—RealTek NICs were for a long time the 'cheap and (?)cheerful' of the NIC world. Functional when you get them working but getting to that point can be painful.

Other people already in this thread know far more about this than I do, but a random thought:

that said, why on earth would my TCP/IP no longer have Ethernet as an option? Would a faulty driver delete that somehow AND make my system slow as hell and crashy? Seems a stretch that a wrong 4 digit number in a driver could cause all that.

Yes, that sounds exactly like the behaviour I experienced when I first attempted to edit the drivers (I missed one instance of the vendor ID value). The machine will bog down and do some truly ridiculous things.

Yes, this is totally possible. One possible scenario: let's say one of the vendor IDs is used in the card discovery/driver installation routine, another in the meat of the driver itself. From the computer's point of view that will look like it had an Ethernet card at startup that then suddenly partially disappeared, so it will keep trying to talk to it but it'll keep erroring out / timing out. Every time it tried to touch the Ethernet card it'd have to deal again with the fact that it was unexpectedly Not There. So yeah I think that could feel very slow and crashy.

 

[Swabbie]

Nope, any PCI ethernet card with Mac drivers will do. A fast PCI card absolutely annihilates the CSII card in raw performance.

@Swabbie I would recommend the Realtek 8169 rather than the 8139. The 8169 is extremely common and dirt cheap. Don't be intimidated by having to edit drivers to get it to work, it's just a matter of using a binary editor to search for and replace the vendor ID. It's no harder than doing a find and replace with word processor. I recommend Quadrivio's "General Edit Lite" for doing this. Sadly, you just have to bite the bullet and do it the "hard" way.

I can send you a bundle of files that'll help you get an 8169 running on OS9 if you decide to go down that route.

Nope, any PCI ethernet card with Mac drivers will do. A fast PCI card absolutely annihilates the CSII card in raw performance.

@Swabbie I would recommend the Realtek 8169 rather than the 8139. The 8169 is extremely common and dirt cheap. Don't be intimidated by having to edit drivers to get it to work, it's just a matter of using a binary editor to search for and replace the vendor ID. It's no harder than doing a find and replace with word processor. I recommend Quadrivio's "General Edit Lite" for doing this. Sadly, you just have to bite the bullet and do it the "hard" way.

I can send you a bundle of files that'll help you get an 8169 running on OS9 if you decide to go down that route.

Thank you. Do you by chance have a source for this editor that’s for OS9 or modern OSX? Only copies I can find are early versions of OSX which I’m not set up for anywhere.
Went on the way back machine to quadrivio .com and couldn’t find anything there even.

NEVERMIND. Looks like I found a source https://www.applefritter.com/node/12467

SO I DECIDEDTO GO AHEAD AND TRY TO EDIT THIS DRIVER first before buying another card. Nothing to lose really.

ok so I have QGEL loaded up and launched on my 6500.

See pics.

https://imgur.com/a/xz0XHhO

I have selected “open” and opened the RTL8139x Driver extension. Looks like a puzzle piece with a crab inside.

Stuck at step 2. (See instructions below) As lock and unlock file are both greyed out and it’s shows locked.

1. Use this editor to open the driver file "RTL8139x Driver".
2. - Select "Unlock Data" from the "View" menu item to unlock data of the driver file to
3. enable the editor to modify the driver file.
4. - Click on the lower frame to activate the lower frame.
5. - Replace all the pci10ec,8139 items with your pcixxxx,yyyy by using the "Replace"
6. function provied in the "Replace" menu item in the "Find" menu item.
7. - Save the driver file.

 

[mikes-macs]

I can confirm that the "Fast Ethernet Desktop PCI Adapter DFE-530TX" Definitely works in a Power Macintosh 6500 both in Mac OS 9 and Mac OS X. It's a 100mb card. The driver is readily available everywhere.
You can zap the PRAM to see if yours shows up again. From past experience, if the card wasn't present during the Mac OS installation then driver support for it will not be installed. For best results install the PCI card so it will be present and do a clean OS installation then driver installation. On reboot Ethernet will be an option in your control panels.

 

[djhaloeight]

I've been trying to get my 6400 online with ethernet myself. I've tried three different PCI NIC cards, with no sucess. I want to keep the machine on 7.5.5, but it seems like all the drivers for the cards I've tried will only work on OS 8/9. I've tried the SMC 1255TX card, a Kingston PCI card, and a stock Apple 10/100 Fast Ethernet PCI SA0025 from a G3. None of them work...."ethernet" won't show up in the TCP/IP control panel. The cards light up when cable is plugged in, etc....but can't get them to work under System 7.5.5.

 

[mikes-macs]

Try this
Check your Extensions Folder for PCI Ethernet extension. If it’s not present you’ll need to do a fresh Mac OS install with the card installed. The installer detects your hardware configuration and installs the necessary files. Also for non Apple Card’s you need a third party driver.