Seeking Drivers for Unknown Apple Ethernet Card?

rbanffy asks: "Does anybody know what this card is? I am resurrecting an old Macintosh LC II and would like to attach it to a network. The card was inside it, but the hard disk had no drivers. It is an LC-PDS Ethernet card with RJ-45 and BNC connectors. The important parts seem to be a SMC 91c92 chip and an EPROM (haven't seen one in years) labeled 'LC ROM 44F0'. Could one of you can identify this critter and point me to the correct drivers?"

Mac Driver Museum

[a.koepke]

You should check out the Mac Driver Museum [macdrivermuseum.com]. If they don't have the right one on their site already there is the MacDrivers Yahoo Group where you can ask.

FCC ID

[NukeIear]

Use the FCC ID, on the conveniently not pictured side of the card and look it up on net. The FCC keeps a handy lookup database online, just for you.

Is this it?

[Gleng]

I found this on mirror.apple.com. [apple.com]

The readme file for this driver is here [apple.com].

To quote:

"Apple Ethernet LC driver file version 1.0.1 This driver file contains drivers for all Apple LC PDS ethernet cards and is installed in the extensions folder."

That was, like, two minutes work on Google. What gives?

Re:And how exactly did this get posted?

[IM6100]

Well, I've got whole boxes of old cards that need to be identified. Maybe we should set up a photo gallery to identify all of them. But I didn't post pictures of any of mine here, so oh well. I guess.

The way I usually figure out what cards are and/or what settings they have is to boot a Slackware boot/root diskette set on the machine and read the kernel messages from the bootup. That's how I figured out the IRQ/IO addressing on the NE2000 card in the machine I run Minix on. Can't do that on a Mac, but you CAN boot up NetBSD, which is just as good.

Re:More future "Ask Slashdot" topics

[kyz]

1. Can't Get You Outta My Head
   
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3. Iron Dragon
   
4. Point of View
   
5. Space Taxi
   
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Next.

Re:More future "Ask Slashdot" topics

[Anonymous Coward]

/proc/nubus, but the info given isn't that great.

Additionally, since this is an m68k box, it's highly unlikely he has a spare one running Linux kicking around. Installing Linux onto an m68k box isn't fun, I speak from experience, and given that the LC II is a '030 and he obviously doesn't have the 68882 FPU, it's highly unlikely that trying is even worth the effort.

And if that doesn't work...

[HotNeedleOfInquiry]

Find the MAC number on the card. The first 3 octets are specific to the manufacturer. You can go to the IEEE site and look them up there.

It either works or it's broken.

[dave1212]

Wanted to moderate, had to participate.

Any EPROM card will work without special drivers, as long as you have an appropriate system installed. 6.0.8 and up, I believe.

Your LC II can only run from System 7.0.1 to 7.5.5, and those have been made available for free download on Apple's site, at their Older Software Downloads page. [apple.com] Heh, there's even Windows software there! Most EPROM-labeled stuff carries somewhat of a rule of thumb with it.. either it works with the default OS install or it's dead. They were all built to Apple's specs.

..and although I too don't see this as much of a /. question, it does show just how far the good Dot has come. The shift in attitude may only be as a result of OS X, but that's alright. However, rbanffy, you should really post this on something like the XLR8YourMac.com forums or such.. you'll get the same answer, faster.