Quadra 950 Ethernet: AAUI or NuBus card?

[EvieSigma]

My newly acquired 950 would certainly benefit from a dose of Ethernet, but I'm not sure which way to go about it. I can get a AAUI to RJ45 transceiver, but there are also loads of NuBus Ethernet cards out there and I'm sure I could find one of those with a RJ45 built in. Thoughts? I don't know anything about how the AAUI port works but I know the 950 has NuBus 90 (20MB/s) slots.

 

[techfury90]

Your limiting factor with network throughput is the CPU speed and the software end of things, not the NIC.

TL;DR: whatever's easier for you. I personally use AAUI. Asante made 10/100 NuBus cards, but they're not worth it. The CPU power just isn't there to even hit 10mbps, much less 100.

 

[EvieSigma]

If eBay still has those 6 dollar AAUI transceivers, AAUI would certainly be CHEAPER than NuBus...

 

[Cory5412]

Buy one of those AAUI transcievers I linked a few days ago. It'll be useful for more than just the 950.

 

[EvieSigma]

Yeah, that's what I'm going to do. To my surprise, that seller actually sold almost completely out of their stock and only has one left, I didn't know us old Mac nerds were so numerous!

 

[Unknown_K]

Built in AAUI is the cheapest way to go.

I have a few 10/100 Nubus cards (and a bunch of 10mb ones) and they have their uses. I think Apples implementation of Ethernet might be what is slowing down transfers. Nubus can saturate 10Mb (~1.3MB/sec) easy enough but the built in SCSI BUS is too slow. Using a Jackhammer or SEIV array with 10/100 Ethernet would give you better then 10Mb speeds but is costly.

 

[EvieSigma]

I guess wasting one of the five slots on something built in would be kinda silly, huh?

That sort of thinking only makes sense when dealing with crappy vampire video!

 

[Unknown_K]

Well any Mac II or 950 with empty slots is kind of a waste to me. Then again I am a Nubus card collecting freak. I kind of prefer the built in Ethernet because it leaves me more slots for other things (DPS cards, video cards, capture cards, CPU upgrades, SCSI cards, DOS cards,Sound cards, etc).

Vampire video is a video setup that uses built in RAM for frame buffers, 950's have dedicated VRAM and quite frankly if you don't need 24 bit color are decent performers.

 

[EvieSigma]

I have to get in there and see if the VRAM is upgraded. Ginormous power supply makes it hard to see without a flashlight...

Once I get a hard disk solution for this thing I can dive into the wonderful cornucopia that is NuBus cards.

 

[techfury90]

Built in AAUI is the cheapest way to go.

I have a few 10/100 Nubus cards (and a bunch of 10mb ones) and they have their uses. I think Apples implementation of Ethernet might be what is slowing down transfers. Nubus can saturate 10Mb (~1.3MB/sec) easy enough but the built in SCSI BUS is too slow. Using a Jackhammer or SEIV array with 10/100 Ethernet would give you better then 10Mb speeds but is costly.

I'm not 100% sure if even that is true. The thing is that while NuBus can saturate those speeds, that's assuming a nice convenient streaming block transfer, like copying data from one disk to another. Ethernet ain't like that, the data has to be broken up into individual packets, checksummed, routing tables have to be consulted, etc etc. That's why I dragged the CPU into the whole discussion: the bus can certainly do it, but the simple fact of the matter is that network I/O is by its nature much more CPU intensive than, say, a simple file copy would be.

 

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

I have to get in there and see if the VRAM is upgraded. Ginormous power supply makes it hard to see without a flashlight...

Once I get a hard disk solution for this thing I can dive into the wonderful cornucopia that is NuBus cards.

You can't determine if the VRAM SIMMs are 256K or 512K in situ using a flashlight in that manner. There's an easier way, check the VRAM of the system using LEM's data on 1MB vs. 2MB color depth capability in the options available to you in the Monitors Control Panel.

Have fun, checking out expansion cards of any kind is my favorite part of this hobby. The kick I get out of things like messing around with the multiple display setups I could never afford when using 68K for graphics production IRL is truly amazing.

 

[EvieSigma]

Yeah, I recycle a lot of computers at my job and a lot of them have wacky PCI cards that I can't even understand, like cards with 5 3.5mm jacks and two FireWire 400 ports.

I'll have to use my 7.6.1 CD to boot this monster and determine its RAM and other specs due to the whole no hardrive problem.