Question:
As I was reorganizing spare parts in the living room (SCSI controller
cards, XGA-2 cards, memory, ESDI drives, IDE drives, SCSI drives,
floppy drives, tape drives: what else is a couch for?), I came across a
card that I don't recognize.
I think its MCA because it has the blue plastic by the metal slide and
two holes at the other end for the typical MCA blue plastic. It has a
9 (5-4) hole I/O connector, I guess female by Al S.'s definition.
Cereal adapter?
Answer:
Old 4mbps(only) Token Ring card? Heavy as hell right?
You got an old 4Mbit Token Ring adapter most likely.
Look at
http://lightning.prohosting.com/~ps2page/cardpicts/index.htm
under "E000 IBM Token-Ring 4Mb/s Adapter long" if that matches what you've got.
I would place a bet it is. :-)
It sounds like an old MC Token Ring card.
You'd win. That's it! But with an AUI connector???
Now I've got something else to put on my swap list.
Anyone want it?
AUI ? AUI has 15 pins usually (if not 16-pin mini-centronics - recently).
That 9-pin female Sub-D was IBMs standard TR adapter connector from the "dark
ages" onwards until about 1994, when TR-adapters with RJ45 connectors showed
up. Guess Madge was one of the first. Before that all "100% compatibles" had
that connector.
Live and learn. I've stuck strictly to ethernet, preferably BNC, and
the IBM LAN Adapter/A for Ethernet has BNC, 10BaseT and AUI, 15 pins.
Then I found that many BNC items were really TR.
I recently got an IBM LAN Adapter/A for Ethernet which uses 16-pin mini-
centronics and not 15 pins.
Even the ethernet Hub I use for whatever comes along only has BNC,
10BaseT and AUI, 15 pins.
Token, token, who's got the token?
You guessed right. I guessed the same thing, and got one out to confirm it.
Dan described it quite well. The FRU number is 83X7488A.
Back in November I bought what I thought was an IBM hub for 10Base2,
but it turned out to be something else; I thought Token Ring. The
recycler took it back. When I was there a few weeks ago I saw many BNC
items; none were ethernet.
Seriously, you could think of token ring that way except its not risky
to be "it". Whoever is "it" gets to blab.
