Re: Turning a Mac IIcx into an ISDN router
On Sun, 2002-01-13 at 10:13, Richard Gaywood wrote:
> I've recently acquired a Mac IIcx (16Mhz 68030, Nubus expansion) and I
> was wondering about the possiblity of turning it into an ISDN router for
> my home LAN. To do so, I need to (a) get Linux running and (b) get
> Linux-supported network and ISDN connections.
>
> The former seems to be quite easy, as Nubus ethernet cards are all over
> Ebay. I could do with some recommendations as to chipset and model
> though, if anyone can oblige.
>
The 8390 based chipset are the best supported. Asante is a sure bet,
and seems to appear on ebay quite frequently, but Farallon and Dayna
should work OK as well. Stay away from the Apple Sonic Nubus card as I
haven't figured where they hide the sonic registers yet.
> The second is trickier. There are native ISDN cards, but Linux support
> seems to be pretty ropey on all the Google searches I turned up. The
> other alternative I wondered about is a serial card and then a serial
> TA, which I'm guessing might be easier to get working.
>
You're definitely not going to find drivers for linux for either a Nubus
ISDN card or a NUBUS serial card. If I ever got my hands on a Nubus
serial card I don't think a driver would be that difficult to implement
and might offer better performance than the on board serial I/O. This
leaves you with using the onboard serial which in my opinion offers
rather poor performance. It just might be able to handle a single 64K
ISDN channel, but I sincerely doubt it. The 16MHz 030 processor isn't
much on performance either.
> Can anyone offer advice, where I might find further info, etc? I have
> scanned around on DejaGoogle, Google and this list archive but 90% of it
> seems to be "that card doesn't work" posts from 1997, which is probably
> not that relevent today :o(
>
> Thanks in advance.
>
Ray Knight
Linux for m68k Macintosh Developer
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