10bT Ethernet on G3s

[Franklinstein]

I've been perplexed by this particular anomaly for a while, so I figured I'd ask and see if any of you know.

On almost all of my Old World G3s (beige DT/MT/AIO, WS/PDQ, not Kanga), the onboard 10bT Ethernet is collision city when used on a network with 100bT machines. I've used different switches/cables/computers, with the same result. Somebody said it was because 10bT is only half-duplex while 100bT is normally full-duplex, thus there are problems. I'd buy that except, no other beige machine has the same problems; I can use a 6100/60 (or my 540c, even) with its AAUI-10bT adapter, or my Mac II with a NuBus 10bT card, on a mixed network with no problems, but I plug in my WallStreet or G3MT, and it has more collisions than packets received. It doesn't quite explain why the Kanga works just fine, either...

More or less, I'm just curious to see if anybody else has noticed these issues or perhaps has a more plausible explanation or work-around.

 

[madmax_2069]

have you checked if the IP of each machine isn't manually set. and that is conflicting with the IP of the other machines???

you can manualy set each machines IP

here is a example, say you have 5 computers and don't want them to conflict with each other , i am going to use 192.168.0.x as a example IP

1. set machine 1 to 192.168.0.2

2. set machine 2 to 192.168.0.3

3. set machine 3 to 192.168.0.4

4. set machine 4 to 192.168.0.5

5. set machine 5 to 192.168.0.6

i have always found out that if you set each machines IP address manually you wont run into any IP collisions my router is a 10/100 ethernet router with wifi G+ and i have my DA G4 (wired), my Beige G3 AIO (wired and wireless), my Yikes G4 (wired), my P 475 (wired), my friends PC (wired), my P1 windows 98SE PC (wired), my newton MP 2100 (wireless), and my xbox (wired). and i have each IP manually set ( in OS X or OS 9 use DHCP with manual IP)

even tho my Beige G3 has a 10 baseT half duplex ethernet it still will play nice with the other machines, even tho most of them connect at 100 baseT (as shown in OS X network pref panel) on each system but the Beige G3 still uses 10 baseT half and all the systems still connect fine with no IP collisions.

all of these machines can be running with no issue what so ever with the network.

i hope i didn't tell you something you already know, tell me how it goes. the collision's i think you are talking about are IP collisions, where 2 or more machines can be set to use the same ip. do what i said above to eliminate that possibility.

 

[ChristTrekker]

have you checked if the IP of each machine isn't manually set. and that is conflicting with the IP of the other machines???
you can manualy set each machines IP

If you have some manually set and some using DHCP, make sure the manual ones are not in the same range that DHCP uses. All my servers are in the .11-.30 range of my subnet, and my DHCP starts assigning at .31 and up.

 

[pee-air]

I think he's talking about datagram collisions. i.e. two devices try to send a packet at the same time.

http://articles.techrepublic.com.com/5100-6349-1056327.html

 

[Franklinstein]

Yes, I'm talking about datagram collisions. Regardless of how my machines acquire their IP addresses (manually or DHCP), the problem G3s still have data transfer problems. They'll play nice with a router for Internet access or my LaserWriter 630, but as soon as I try to do a file transfer from a 100bT machine to the 10bT G3, nothing but collisions. The files download eventually, but it takes forever because the same packets keep having to be sent over and over again on account of the collisions.

 

[madmax_2069]

ahhh ok i get what you are trying to do now. i thought it was surfing on the net or trying to get on the net , and not doing file transfers over the network. my bad

i only use wifi on my AIO when i am in OS X, only use wired in Mac OS 9 to play the few games that wont run in OS X online.

i guess you dont have any other choice but to get a 10/100baseT PCI card or a wifi PCI card. or just suffer thru the slow transfer speed. it sucks Apple limited the Beige G3 to half duplex

i do have 2 10/100base t PCI cards that came stock in my 2 AIO's that i dont use ( well 1) since i have 1 of them in my P1

 

[Mike Richardson]

I don't know if this is related or not but the onboard Ethernet on my 7200 is horrible. Netscape will download a file at 1K/sec or even slower. I tried the ethernet port and the AAUI port and they both do it. This is connected to a 24 port NETGEAR 10/100 switch. When I put in a Realtek 8319 10/100 PCI card and used it instead, Netscape downloads at about 100K/sec.

My 7300 never had these kinds of problems; the onboard Ethernet was great. My friend's Beige G3 also performed acceptable with the onboard; he uses an Ethernet card though since he wants the most speed.

 

[QuadSix50]

I don't know if this is related or not but the onboard Ethernet on my 7200 is horrible. Netscape will download a file at 1K/sec or even slower. I tried the ethernet port and the AAUI port and they both do it. This is connected to a 24 port NETGEAR 10/100 switch. When I put in a Realtek 8319 10/100 PCI card and used it instead, Netscape downloads at about 100K/sec.
My 7300 never had these kinds of problems; the onboard Ethernet was great. My friend's Beige G3 also performed acceptable with the onboard; he uses an Ethernet card though since he wants the most speed.

Now we know why pee-air junked the 7200.

(I still would have kept it... )

 

[Quadraman]

I don't know if this is related or not but the onboard Ethernet on my 7200 is horrible. Netscape will download a file at 1K/sec or even slower. I tried the ethernet port and the AAUI port and they both do it. This is connected to a 24 port NETGEAR 10/100 switch. When I put in a Realtek 8319 10/100 PCI card and used it instead, Netscape downloads at about 100K/sec.
My 7300 never had these kinds of problems; the onboard Ethernet was great. My friend's Beige G3 also performed acceptable with the onboard; he uses an Ethernet card though since he wants the most speed.

My 7500 runs acceptably when connected through the onboard ethernet. Aren't they all 10bT? You can't expect lightning fast connections when using one of these with broadband. The nice thing is if you use one of these as a secondary machine, it doesn't hog the bandwith from your main machine. You can even have several of them on a network where the same number of 10/100/1000 machines will create a slowdown.

 

[pee-air]

I don't know if this is related or not but the onboard Ethernet on my 7200 is horrible. Netscape will download a file at 1K/sec or even slower. I tried the ethernet port and the AAUI port and they both do it. This is connected to a 24 port NETGEAR 10/100 switch. When I put in a Realtek 8319 10/100 PCI card and used it instead, Netscape downloads at about 100K/sec.

Coincidentally, I also junked a 24 port switch with my 7200. Hmmm...

I just recently added a 100Mb RealTek card to my 7300. The 7300 has a bad builtin NIC. If I recall correctly, NetBSD had issues with the NIC on the 7300.

Has anyone ever managed to get Gigabit Ethernet on a beige box? I'm compelled to give it a try, but I don't know that Classic Mac OS would support such a contrivance. (Contrivance? I've been reading too many of Equil's posts. [] ]'> j/k )

 

[LCGuy]

If the drivers are there it should support it. Remember, many G4s shipped with gigabit ethernet, and as far as i'm aware it works fine under OS 9.

 

[equill]

I have more Macs in a LAN than bog-standard-issue AppleShare will allow; 32. I've never had 32 up and active at a time, and only rarely had to change a manually-set IP address (temporarily) to get two with the same IP address active at once. The usual result if I forget is that the second will be automatically shut down by its System.

I never use the inbuilt ethernet unless it is already 10/100 or irremediable, and add 10/100 to any Mac with a PCI or NuBus slot. Even the antiques that need bridges (EN/SC, LT/EN), AAUI adapters or PC cards, with the exception of PBs 520, 540 and 1400, mix it happily with faster cards, although perforce with a 10Base-T hub between them and the 10/100 switches because they have not otherwise the necessary autonegotiation to work. As a generality, I rarely have more than three or four active in the LAN at the same time, so the fairground is not all that crowded.

Even the 512Ke will shortly leave its EN/LT crutch in favour of EN/SC. I'm almost, but for emergencies, at the point of being able to kiss floppy disks goodbye forever. The point of all this is that for PPC Macs and up, the rewards of forsaking inbuilt 10Base-T for added cards are great.

de