Recently installed a new old stock 3C509B-TPO (10Base-T only) in my 5160. It works well and I have a few notes to share.
This is a 16-bit jumperless card and ships with PnP enabled, port 300 and irq 10. Port 300 can conflict with other common devices - for example, MIDI and SCSI interfaces, and the Lotech XT-IDE CF card. IRQ 10 doesn't exist on an XT.
3Com provides 3C5X9CFG.EXE to change the card's settings and store them to EEPROM. It's on disk 2 of their "Etherdisk for Etherlink 10". Although it ran on my 5160 it wasn't able to detect the card. I had to put it in an AT machine to configure it. I have a XT-IDE CF which uses ports 300-31f, so I configured the 3C509 to port 320 and IRQ 5. The 3C509 uses ports 320-32f in this configuration. I also disabled PnP but I'm not sure that's required.
3Com supplies a packet driver (3C5X9PD.COM) which checks for the presence of a 186 or better. I patched around the processor check but wasn't able to get it to load on my V20.
There is also a Crynwr packet driver (3C509.COM) which comes with source. The unmodified version also checks for a 186. Nestor modified it to support 8086/88 CPUs (attached 3C509.ZIP). This version always uses 8086 instructions so is sub-optimal on later CPUs.
Lastly, I modified 3C509.COM to bypass the 186 check (attached 3C509V20.ZIP). This works fine on my V20 and is about 10% faster than the 8086 version based on transfer speeds using the mTCP server. I'm seeing about 30KB/s receive and 40KB/s send.
While it's a pain to configure the card in an AT before use, these cards are a cheap and easy-to-find option for twisted pair Ethernet on XT machines.
This is a 16-bit jumperless card and ships with PnP enabled, port 300 and irq 10. Port 300 can conflict with other common devices - for example, MIDI and SCSI interfaces, and the Lotech XT-IDE CF card. IRQ 10 doesn't exist on an XT.
3Com provides 3C5X9CFG.EXE to change the card's settings and store them to EEPROM. It's on disk 2 of their "Etherdisk for Etherlink 10". Although it ran on my 5160 it wasn't able to detect the card. I had to put it in an AT machine to configure it. I have a XT-IDE CF which uses ports 300-31f, so I configured the 3C509 to port 320 and IRQ 5. The 3C509 uses ports 320-32f in this configuration. I also disabled PnP but I'm not sure that's required.
3Com supplies a packet driver (3C5X9PD.COM) which checks for the presence of a 186 or better. I patched around the processor check but wasn't able to get it to load on my V20.
There is also a Crynwr packet driver (3C509.COM) which comes with source. The unmodified version also checks for a 186. Nestor modified it to support 8086/88 CPUs (attached 3C509.ZIP). This version always uses 8086 instructions so is sub-optimal on later CPUs.
Lastly, I modified 3C509.COM to bypass the 186 check (attached 3C509V20.ZIP). This works fine on my V20 and is about 10% faster than the 8086 version based on transfer speeds using the mTCP server. I'm seeing about 30KB/s receive and 40KB/s send.
While it's a pain to configure the card in an AT before use, these cards are a cheap and easy-to-find option for twisted pair Ethernet on XT machines.
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