Hello,
I would like to share my project that is long overdue for publishing here - MacTwister, a fairly universal Twisted Pair breakout board for a variety of SE and SE/30 network cards. It’s about the small PCB that you screw to the computer chassis that contains an external connector.
I was motivated to complete this design as I had one “widowed” MacCon without a connector board and my other MacCon and Etherport only had coax+AUI connectors and would require a not so nice external converter.
Here comes MacTwister:
So what’s the deal? First of all, the idea is to support two typical connection pinouts for the common network cards:
But "there is one more thing". Because of the short supply of AUI↔Twisted Pair transceivers, the card was designed to support all three common options from the era:
My SE and SE/30 are happily running with the breakout board!
You can find more details about the project here: https://dymczyk.com/mactwister-maccondaynaetherport-rj45-breakout
Finally, action items:
1. I'm looking for 2-3 early testers of the card - I could supply the newest version and I would be happy to get feedback, particularly a heads-up if it works. Please let me know!
2. I have a few (around 10) spare cards of the newest revision which are mostly populated, but I would need to order a few components to finish them. Please drop me a message or post here if you would be interested in the card at about $35/CHF35 + shipping. I can then post in the Trading forum with the details, but I would like to gauge the interest.
I would like to share my project that is long overdue for publishing here - MacTwister, a fairly universal Twisted Pair breakout board for a variety of SE and SE/30 network cards. It’s about the small PCB that you screw to the computer chassis that contains an external connector.
I was motivated to complete this design as I had one “widowed” MacCon without a connector board and my other MacCon and Etherport only had coax+AUI connectors and would require a not so nice external converter.
Here comes MacTwister:
So what’s the deal? First of all, the idea is to support two typical connection pinouts for the common network cards:
- Asante MacCon (both SE and SE/30 tested)
- Shiva/Kinetics EtherportSE (tested) and Dayna (not tested, but it seems it has the same pinout)
But "there is one more thing". Because of the short supply of AUI↔Twisted Pair transceivers, the card was designed to support all three common options from the era:
- T7220 (and T7220A which is backwards compatible)
- AM79C98 (DIP case)
- LXT902PC (PLCC case)
My SE and SE/30 are happily running with the breakout board!
You can find more details about the project here: https://dymczyk.com/mactwister-maccondaynaetherport-rj45-breakout
Finally, action items:
1. I'm looking for 2-3 early testers of the card - I could supply the newest version and I would be happy to get feedback, particularly a heads-up if it works. Please let me know!
2. I have a few (around 10) spare cards of the newest revision which are mostly populated, but I would need to order a few components to finish them. Please drop me a message or post here if you would be interested in the card at about $35/CHF35 + shipping. I can then post in the Trading forum with the details, but I would like to gauge the interest.
