• 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.

SCSI to Ethernet Adapter on New Hardware

aladds

Well-known member
Nice! The Ethernet certainly works, but using a normal IDC cable I do get interference on the LCD. I had planned to make a better version using FFCs but then I got distracted looking at making a Duo version...which didn't happen since I don't own a Duo and lost out on a few auctions for them.

Note that with my board I parted out the Ethernet at the SPI interface, not the Ethernet bit; I did it using the same pinout as these boards so that other people could re-use the powerbook bit without needing to spin special ethernet boards for their specific laptop (presuming they could make those boards fit!)
 

Chopsticks

Well-known member
interesting, its likely either power filtering or the more likely that the speed of the SPI bus running on that cable it putting to much EMI everywhere that's effecting the screen. being that the idc cable its going to act like an antenna you could try a quick simple hack just to see by covering the idc with something like copper tape and connecting it to ground, if that fixes/improves anything then you can actually buy shielded idc cable, and the same goes for flat flex cables. on that note pros of flat flex are obviously the smaller/thinner physical size of the cable and connector, but downside is that the pin pitch might to challenging for people to solder themselves.

as for me, I actually changed the magjack to an idc connector and ran my network port from there, I figured that since ethernet is using differential pairs that the potential for noise would be lower.. not sure really if you have the pcb board space for that though, but id be interested to see if shielding you cable has any effect
 
Top