Working internet! Upgrade OPT to 1.3 and install Farallon drivers or leave alone?

[9646gt]

I have a LCIII with a Farallon ethermac LC PDS card. I finally fresh installed 7.5.3 and did the 7.5.5 update all using my BlueSCSI. I got the Internet working and browsing with Netscape Navigator 2.02. Open Transport 1.1 is what I believe is installed. Is there any point installing the update to 1.3? Any benefit? What the best source for getting a copy that works without a hitch?

Also I did not install any driver for the ethermac. Should I download and install the correct driver for the card? Or leave well enough alone?

Also, is there a better browser I should be using?

 

[Nixontheknight]

I don't think you need drivers as long as it works fine. iCab is the most up-to-date browser you can get for System 7 and 68k macs running OS 8

 

[halkyardo]

Those "works without drivers" ethernet cards are usually clones of the original Apple EtherTalk NB card, however most of them usually have more onboard buffer memory than the 16 KB that the Apple card came with - from a quick bit of research, it looks like your card has 64KB.

They'll work fine with the Apple driver (preinstalled in System 7.5.x, installed with the Network Software Installer disks for earlier versions), but Apple's driver assumes 16K of buffer memory, while the driver that came with your card will likely use the full 64K. In certain situations (e.g. when the machine is under heavy load) that extra buffer memory may help with performance - the system has more of a chance to catch up on received packets before the buffer gets full.

Having said that, in all but the heaviest use you will probably not notice any difference, so you might as well keep using the Apple driver.

(Source: I wrote a driver for a new ethernet card I'm prototyping, and as part of that have studied the hardware and drivers of old Mac ethernet cards pretty extensively)

 

[9646gt]

I don't think you need drivers as long as it works fine. iCab is the most up-to-date browser you can get for System 7 and 68k macs running OS 8

Thanks for the response. I am trying icab 2.9.9 as we speak but on launch it gives a type 1 error saying "the application unknown has unexpectedly quit because an error of type 1 occured" . I ha e 32mb RAM with virtual memory enabled, 1024k disk cache, and 32bit addressing turned on.

 

[9646gt]

Those "works without drivers" ethernet cards are usually clones of the original Apple EtherTalk NB card, however most of them usually have more onboard buffer memory than the 16 KB that the Apple card came with - from a quick bit of research, it looks like your card has 64KB.

They'll work fine with the Apple driver (preinstalled in System 7.5.x, installed with the Network Software Installer disks for earlier versions), but Apple's driver assumes 16K of buffer memory, while the driver that came with your card will likely use the full 64K. In certain situations (e.g. when the machine is under heavy load) that extra buffer memory may help with performance - the system has more of a chance to catch up on received packets before the buffer gets full.

Having said that, in all but the heaviest use you will probably not notice any difference, so you might as well keep using the Apple driver.

(Source: I wrote a driver for a new ethernet card I'm prototyping, and as part of that have studied the hardware and drivers of old Mac ethernet cards pretty extensively)

Thank you and I may try and use the driver and get a bit more performance maybe.

 

[halkyardo]

Thank you and I may try and use the driver and get a bit more performance maybe.

One other thing I just thought of in favour of using the drivers that came with the card - they will usually also include some kind of diagnostic application on the disk, that only works with their specific driver. If you ever end up having to troubleshoot networking issues, sometimes those diagnostics are useful.

 

[9646gt]

I forgot the PRAM battery is removed so that's why it wasn't launching. Ugh. It's been a long night haha

 

[9646gt]

I forgot the PRAM battery is removed so that's why it wasn't launching. Ugh. It's been a long nightbhaha

One other thing I just thought of in favour of using the drivers that came with the card - they will usually also include some kind of diagnostic application on the disk, that only works with their specific driver. If you ever end up having to troubleshoot networking issues, sometimes those diagnostics are useful.

Great seems worth a go! I love this community!