This is only half MacBSD related...

Just wanted to let everyone know (who cares) that I have successfully run 
a PDS ethernet card simultaneously with a PDS video card in an SE/30!

I think we all have the same ethernet card - it's the Asante MacCon 30 
(or something like that). It has a pass through PDS slot at the opposite 
end from the PDS connector. This slot was specifically designed to work 
in a IIsi with the Radius Pivot II video card.

Well, I plugged my Xceed MacroColor 30HR into the pass through slot. The 
first time I did this, the video card didn't do anything. But the manual 
said that you can switch the two jumpers on the Ethernet card and they 
select between four different address ranges that the card will work on.

I did it, and I'll be damned if I wasn't running an SE/30 with 24 bit 
color on an external monitor while sharing files accross ethernet with my 
PowerBook! 

There's a big catch though: the pass through PDS slot points at right 
angles to the card it self, i.e. the video card is parallel to the 
motherboard, about 2 inches about it. Translation: it would have to go 
right through the floppy & hard drives, and about 1/2 inch into the power 
supply. I had the motherboard hanging out of the back of my opened SE/30, 
being supported by the internal video cable, with the SCSI ribbon twisted 
upside down to connect.

So, all we need to make this a reality is a PDS connector that is shaped 
like this:
                                           
 #                                    .  |# 
 |-   to go in to the ether card      .  |
 _|   which is shaped like this:      .  |
 _|                                   .  |
                                         |
                                         |
                                         |
                                         |
                                        |-|

Because there is plenty of room beside the monitor tube for the video card.
Does anyone know how hard it would be to make one of these? I assume that 
having a ribbon cable between a male and female PDS connector wouldn't provide
good enough signal quality, thoughts? Also, is it even possible to find a pds 
connector without cannibalizing hardware?

Now to the MacBSD questions: If I change the address used by the Asante ethernet card, will MacBSD still recognize it? Automatically? With a recompile? Finally,has anyone gotten Color X working with the Xceed video card in the first place?

-1LT Avram Dorfman
HQ USAF Network Management
permanent email address: avram@pobox.com

"Methodological observation of the sociometrical behavior tendencies of 
prematurated isolates indicates that a causal relationship exists between 
groundward tropism and lachrimatory behavior forms."

On Mon, 6 May 1996, Kevin Radke wrote:

> 
> For the brave, there is a new Daystar test kernel at:
> 
> ftp://cpre1.ee.iastate.edu/pub/netbsd/netbsd-daystar#2.tar.gz
> 
> It should be more robust than the previous kernel.  It
> was compiled from current source as of Apr 28 (or sometime
> near there)
> 
> Don't even try it if your machine doesn't have a
> daystar powercache installed. :)  The magic word for the day
> would probably be "buss-error"...
> 
> You can also leave your powercache enabled when booting
> into netbsd, since the kernel disables the cache early in
> boot, and then re-enables it when it is ready.
> 
> It has been fairly well tested on my SE/30 w/20MB and a
> 33Mhz Daystar Powercache.  Some old benchmarks I ran
> showed about a 25% increase in speed compared to the
> cache being disabled.
> 
> Comments welcome...
> Kevin
> 
> P.S. When time permits, source containing my mods will become available...
>      (Hopefully soon)
> 
> 
> ----------------------------------------------------------------
> |/     |)                   ~ Flight Management Systems Engineer
> |\evin |\adke                ~ Rockwell-Collins Avionics
> radke@cpre1.ee.iastate.edu    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> kmradke@fmsb.cca.rockwell.com ~  Iowa State University Grad
> ----------------------------------------------------------------
>