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Easy to set up Network System that work with Boot ROMs?

Joined
Dec 30, 2012
Messages
27
Location
Koo-Wee-Rup, Victoria, Australia
I picked up a very rare network card for an IBM JX which is looking for a network to serve it a file. On boot, it seems to be waiting for a response from a server but eventually times out. Appears to be coaxial Ethernet - is there something simple I can install that supports an NE2000 so I can see if I can serve it a boot image?

Thanks for any thoughts;

Anthony
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You should be really careful unless you know exactly what that card is. The IBM Cluster Adapter was period correct for the time, and it also uses a BNC connector. And it's also a totally different network technology that is not compatible with Ethernet.

Can you post higher resolution pictures of the card? (Both sides ...)
 
That is what I expected. And it's good think you did not try to hook it up to Ethernet ... I'm not sure which side would earn the "hit points."

I have two ISA versions of that adapter here and several PCjr versions of it. The technical reference is readily available. I am looking to port mTCP to it so that we can have mTCP running on top of native, IBM specific hardware, and for Internet connectivity I'll write a small gateway program to bridge Cluster to Ethernet. But I haven't even started poking at the adapter to make it send or receive a packet yet. Compared to Ethernet the programming model it's quite icky; it is like the love child of peer-to-peer SNA and Ethernet.

Keep it safe - it will make a wonderful part of a VCF exhibit one day. (The PC, PCjr, and PC XT all part of an IBM Cluster Network.)
 
I have just bought a New Old Stock IBM PC Cluster Adaptor. Is the software available somewhere? Would love to give it a spin. Would be great to bring a JX over to the USA as part of a PCjr exhibit.

I ordered a JRide the other day - over the next week or two I plan to wire up an Adaptor to theoretically use PCJr sidecars in the JX expansion bay.

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It seems to have been a predecessor to the IBM PC Network (Broadband) cards (CSMA/CA vs CSMA/CD and 375Kbps vs 2Mbps). Maybe there is some IBM Networking software, but I'm not sure which would cater to interfaces that old.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_PC_Network

Mirror of the old IBM PCCBBS here:
http://ps-2.kev009.com/pccbbs/
The allfiles.txt in the root has all the descriptions.
 
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