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From: sysmark@aurora.physics.utoronto.ca (Mark Bartelt)
Subject: Re: EtherPort II device drivers
Message-ID: <1991Jun12.174952.2567@helios.physics.utoronto.ca>
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Reply-To: mark@cita.toronto.edu
Organization: University of Toronto Physics/Astronomy/CITA
References: <1991Jun11.190618.20252@nevada.edu>
Date: Wed, 12 Jun 1991 17:49:52 GMT

In article <1991Jun11.190618.20252@nevada.edu>
hisaw@nevada.edu (DAVID HISAW) writes:

| Does anyone know where I can find a device driver for the old Excelan
| EtherPort II card.  I tried contacting Shiva Tech. support since they
| now have rights to the EtherPort product line to see if they could
| help me but have not heard back from them.

Dayna Communications (801/531-0600, 801/972-2000) sells one for $49.95
plus shipping.  They support only the later-model EtherPort II boards,
though.  The original boards were long, and used one vendor's ethernet
chip, whereas the later boards were short, and used some other vendor's
ethernet chip.  (I once knew who the chip sources were, but I've since
forgotten.)  If you have an old-style long EtherPort II board, you're
out of luck.  Or, more accurately, semi-out_of_luck.  Dayna has (or at
least had) a program where if you had an old (long) EtherPort II, you
could send it to them and buy their board (the DaynaPort) for 50% off.

The company itself struck me as a bit flaky (organizationally, that is):
When I first ordered the driver, nobody told me that there *were* two
different flavours of EtherPort boards (I certainly didn't know), nor
that they supported only one flavour.  In fact, ours was an old one.
So we went ahead and ordered one of their boards, which we're now using.
It took five or six phone calls over the course of a couple months just
to get the confirming paperwork that I needed to submit for reimbursement
at my end (I'd charged it to my credit card, to expedite delivery).

Technically, though they seem OK:  Their driver works just fine with the
board we got from them.  Since we don't have any of the newer EtherPort
products, I can't confirm that the Dayna driver works equally well with
them, as they claim.  No reason to suspect otherwise, though.

If you hear of anyone who provides an A/UX driver for the *old* EtherPort
boards, I'd certainly be interested in hearing about it.

Mark Bartelt                                                 416/978-5619
Canadian Institute for                              mark@cita.toronto.edu
Theoretical Astrophysics                            mark@cita.utoronto.ca