SE/30 A-Series ethernet card drivers?

[JohnR]

Hi, I have an SE/30 with this A-series ethernet card (possibly originally for a IIsi) that works fine and has been working fine for years. It seems to work ok with no special drivers installed but transfers seem a bit slow. Does anyone know if there's specific drivers for this card that, if installed, could improve network performance? I'll do some speed tests a bit later and jot down the results.

Thanks so much in advance
John

 

[zigzagjoe]

That's a Farallon pn 594 card. I have the same. It is functionally identical to an asante maccon or certain apple ethertalk cards - they're effectively clones and all use the same driver. As such, no performance improvements to be had, as far as I am aware.

Transfer speeds depend heavily on what protocol you're using to transfer data - I find AFP to be among the best and FTP much worse.

 

[Arbee]

All of those cards are Mac-ified versions of the famous PC NE2000 card. 3Com designed the original one for Apple, and both Farallon and Asante copied it. They're PIO with extra steps (the Ethernet chip DMAs packets to and from RAM on the card, and the Mac then PIO reads/writes that RAM). They're easy to make and easy to program for, but not super fast.

 

[Nixontheknight]

Hi, I have an SE/30 with this A-series ethernet card (possibly originally for a IIsi) that works fine and has been working fine for years. It seems to work ok with no special drivers installed but transfers seem a bit slow. Does anyone know if there's specific drivers for this card that, if installed, could improve network performance? I'll do some speed tests a bit later and jot down the results.

Thanks so much in advance
John

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wait how did you vnc into the SE/30? What program(s) did you use?

 

[JohnR]

Thanks for that info, its very interesting.

wait how did you vnc into the SE/30? What program(s) did you use?

Oh, just using Timbuktu

 

[JohnR]

Thanks for the info about the card. Using system 7.5.5 it will download at around 48kbytes per second from Macintosh Garden with Navigator 2.02

 

[Mk.558]

That's max speed as far as that thing goes. If you look at the Data Transfer Rates section in the Guide, that's pretty standard. Usually your best rates will be with AFP, i.e. downloading it on a 10.4 box then shuffling it over via AFP will get you roughly 4x your result there.

 

[Nixontheknight]

Thanks for that info, its very interesting.

Oh, just using Timbuktu

and what software are you using on the SE/30?

 

[Chopsticks]

with the exact same card in my SE/30 using an admittedly bloated system 7.5.5 and Open Transport i get 85-90kb/s average with peeks upto around 95kb/s using AFP on netatalk2 from my linux server.

running the exact same setup with FTP (even with AFP shares still mounted) i get an average of 83kb/s after it ramps up. it peeks at around 86kb/s, though i have had peaks upto 90kb/s back when i was doing testing comparing transfers speeds between this card and a Scuznet.

no special drivers or anything however i found a massive difference in average and max speeds, along with transfer ramp up time to reach those speeds depending on what FTP server software i was running on the other end. some of the FTP servers i tried out on mac, windows and linux would be 30-40kb/s max. i never looked into the reasons for such a variance however its worth pointing out

 

[JohnR]

Both the SE/30 and the Wallstreet are running Timbuktu 4.0 to allow screen sharing.

with the exact same card in my SE/30 using an admittedly bloated system 7.5.5 and Open Transport i get 85-90kb/s average with peeks upto around 95kb/s using AFP on netatalk2 from my linux server.

running the exact same setup with FTP (even with AFP shares still mounted) i get an average of 83kb/s after it ramps up. it peeks at around 86kb/s, though i have had peaks upto 90kb/s back when i was doing testing comparing transfers speeds between this card and a Scuznet.

no special drivers or anything however i found a massive difference in average and max speeds, along with transfer ramp up time to reach those speeds depending on what FTP server software i was running on the other end. some of the FTP servers i tried out on mac, windows and linux would be 30-40kb/s max. i never looked into the reasons for such a variance however its worth pointing out

Ah yes it does seem to vary a lot hey. I've done a few more speed measurements copying files over the network: (various system software versions etc)

Wallstreet copying from SE30: 62k/sec
Wallstreet copying from Mac II: 101k/sec
Wallstreet copying from Mystic CC: 136k/sec
Mac II copying from Mystic: 83k/sec
PB 170 copying from Mystic: 20k/sec (Etherwave adapter)

 

[Chopsticks]

there's going to be a theoretical limit for each system based on CPU speed, bus speed, hdd speed etc, but on top of that i think software overhead is also going to play a part. i haven't done any network packet analysis to see if exactly why different FTP servers had such different max transfer and ramp up speeds. i suspect it could be a related to either error correction or perhaps different FTP server implementations use different timeouts and/or unsupported features that the older mac OS (or Fetch) just ignores causing some fallback implementation to occur... honestly though im just speculating atm.

Some day when i have the time i do intend to investigate further for curiosity sake to see eactly why however i've had to many other projects to get done so i haven't been in the position to setup a controlled environment for testing. also the thought of testing multible mac's along with different system versions, hdd's, netwokr cards etc is probably half the reason i havent got around to it yet. running basic speed tests is one thing but controlled testing is another thing all together..

perhaps once i finish my dual PDS slot adaptor PCB design i might get back into some speed testing along with trying to find out whats actually effecting the network speeds.
in the mean time if anyone has any insight or knows why id be really interested to hear.

Btw hows the screen sharing perform delay/latecy/overhead wise? i know about timbuktu but ive never actually tried it out in all these years

 

[Nixontheknight]

Both the SE/30 and the Wallstreet are running Timbuktu 4.0 to allow screen sharing.

Does Timbuktu use VNC or is it something proprietary?

 

[JohnR]

Not too sure to be honest, I just assumed it was their own thing