Xref: utzoo comp.dcom.lans:3453 comp.sys.mac:38550 Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!gem.mps.ohio-state.edu!apple!agate!shelby!polya!morgan From: morgan@polya.Stanford.EDU (Robert L. Morgan) Newsgroups: comp.dcom.lans,comp.sys.mac Subject: Re: Ethernet for Mac SE/30? Message-ID: <11861@polya.Stanford.EDU> Date: 20 Sep 89 18:05:44 GMT References: <1989Sep19.184013.6950@utzoo.uucp> <6513@hubcap.clemson.edu> Sender: Robert L. Morgan Reply-To: morgan@Polya.Stanford.EDU (Robert L. Morgan) Followup-To: comp.dcom.lans Organization: Stanford University Lines: 32 > Asante cards are register level compatible with the Apple EtherNet > cards and are only for thin-wire EtherNet. Kinetics is not 100% > register level compatible with the Apple EtherNet cards Perhaps I should discuss this a little more, since I mention it in my followup too. In the IBM PC world, people have to worry a great deal about whether the networking software they want to run in their computer will work with the network interface card they have installed. Since drivers are written to register-level specs, register-level compatibility among boards can be an issue. People have tried to address the problem by creating vendor-independent standards for the interface between a card and networking software, and in the tradition of the PC, there are now three such: FTP Software's Packet Driver, 3Com/Microsoft's NDIS, and Novell/Apple's OLI. In short, things are a muddle. For the Mac, on the other hand, Apple has established exactly one way of interfacing to an Ethernet card. All manufacturers conform to it by supplying a little bit of software with the card that meets the interface spec, and their card thereby works with any networking software you might want to use. The point of all this is that Asante's claim of register-level compatibility with Apple cards is nice feature for their cards, but is much less important than other concerns like price, performance, reliability, availability, confidence in the company, etc. - RL "Bob" Morgan Networking Systems Stanford