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From: cck@cucca.UUCP (Charlie C. Kim)
Newsgroups: net.micro.pc
Subject: Re: Connecting IBM AT to ethernet
Message-ID: <222@cucca.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 11-Apr-86 13:05:45 EST
Article-I.D.: cucca.222
Posted: Fri Apr 11 13:05:45 1986
Date-Received: Sun, 13-Apr-86 08:36:25 EST
References: <154@ucrmath.UUCP> <128@mit-vax.UUCP>
Reply-To: cck@cucca.UUCP (Charlie C. Kim)
Distribution: net
Organization: Columbia University Center for Computing Activities
Lines: 75

In article <128@mit-vax.UUCP> romkey@mit-vax.UUCP (John Romkey) writes:
>In article <154@ucrmath.UUCP> dennis@ucrmath.UUCP (Dennis Michael) writes:
>>Is there a vendor that sells an ethernet board for the AT?
>
>There are a number of vendors who sell ethernet interfaces for the PC
>family.
>
>3COM: the 3C500/3C501 (500 = 501 + software) "dumb" cards, and the 3C505
>interface. The 3C505 is a smart card which can also use the 16 bit AT
>bus, although it works on a normal PC bus too.
>
I believe the dumb board is priced around $600.  I'm not too sure.  I don't
have their number.  MIT PC/IP and FTP software runs with this card.

>Interlan: the NI5010 card, pretty much equivalent to the 3COM
>3C500/3C501 cards.

This is the Micom-Interlan group.  The dumb card is priced around $550
(recently dropped from about $600) or so and the smart card is priced
around 1,200+-200 (all of them are).  Documentation for the dumb board
is available (they gave it to me free); don't know about the smart
board.  Number: (617)-692-3900.  MIT PC/IP and FTP software runs with
this card.

>
>Ungermann-Bass: they also sell a dumb card and a smart card. I don't
>know much about these.
>
Ungermann-Bass' dumb card is the NIC.  The smart card is called the
NIU.  Prices are around $595 and about $1,200+-200 respectively.  My
feeling is that the NIC is best price/performance buy for dumb boards
on the market.  (Full duplex operation, 96 128byte receive buffers for
a total of 12KB, 2 2KB transmit buffers).  Unfortunately, I wouldn't
count on it working on an AT with boosted to run at 9MHz.  The NIC is
the card used by ACIS 4.2BSD on the IBM PC/RT (on the AT bus).
Documentation: user level stuff, (e.g. how to set up the board);
hardware/functional level forget it.  Phone: 1-408-496-0111.

>Excelan: only a smart card, with TCP/IP for it. I believe that most of
>the other smart cards come with no software by default.  
>
Excelan's card is around $1000 dollars again.  The software is an
on-board TCP/IP similar to that running on their other cards (q-bus,
multibus, unibus, etc). and is available as an add-on for around $600.
Documentation for the board is $20.  Contact: 1-408-945-9526


Other vendors included: Tecmar (216 349 1009) and Destek (408 737
7211).  Tecmar's price was a little high $950, but I don't know if
it's a smart board or not.  I don't know anything about Destek other
than a price of about $500-750 - I'm still waiting for information
from them.  Others (which may not even be ethernet board in reality)
include Autocontrol's ACsoft/Netboard $525, Brogen(sp?)'s Elan/PC
$995, Datapoint's IN X-PC $770.  (Most of this information comes from
a Data Sources catalog and may be out of date).

Beside the vendors listed above, FTP software, NRC's Fusion package,
and Woolagong offer TCP/IP service on a PC.  FTP software's is based
upon the MIT PCIP software base.  I believe that both Woolagong and
NRC's Fusion package is a on-board TCP/IP using the smart Interlan or
3com card.  Getting source from NRC or Woolagong is next to impossible
(pricing is so high that you might has well forget it).  Getting
source from FTP software shouldn't be that bad (I hope -- I've heard
good things in this corner).  3com and ub both sell software; 3com's
is some proprietary system and ub's is a implementation of ms-net.

In any event, you can get up and running for about $600-700 with a
dumb board ($1000-1100 if you need supported software) and
$1,000-1,800 using a smart board.  (Software for the smart boards runs
about $500-600).

Charlie C. Kim
User Services
Academic Informations Systems Division
Columbia University