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Looking for an ISA Ethernet controller IC

M

Mark R

Diamond Member
Anyone know of any monolithic (or near monolithic) ISA bus ethernet controllers?

Ideally, it should support 8-bit ISA and have a decent sized data buffer. 10 BaseT support is required. Full duplex or 100BaseT support are not required, but might be interesting. Ideally, the physical access layer should be included, but I don't mind a few simple components.
 
I'm sorry that I don't have any of those any more, but can I ask what do you need it for?

Best regards

Eltano
 
Well, I'd troll the used computer gear sections, it's going to have a little mold on it! 😀 You sparked my interest, and I looked in my junk box, but all the ISA NICs are gone. 🙂
 
Mark R, AMD PCnet/ISA was pretty much the one to get back in the day. (aka NE2100, not to be confused with the NE2000 which had mediocre performance)
 
Mark R, I checked out the AT1500 boards I have based on those chips, and there is no outboard PHY - only the isolation block (absolutely required - don't forget this part!) and boot EPROM glue. I'd check that these chips can do 8 bit but otherwise they seem to meet your needs.
 
Thanks for the help guys. I was really looking for a suitable chip which I could incorporate into a circuit (based around a PIC).

Anyway I've decided that rather than try to use the chip on it's own, it's far better to find an old board, and solder wires to the ISA connectors (at least for prototyping). A quick google search suggests that any old NE2000 card will do, and possibly those with Realtek 8019 chips might be the best.

I'll be digging aroung the bargain bins at the local comp fair in anticipation.

Hmm. Wonder if I can get ISA bus, ethernet and TCP/IP drivers to operate with 500 bytes of RAM...
 
Parallax just came out with an Ethernet Aux board, and the company that make 'em for Parallax (links on their site) also has some Ethernet build-up boards (just the ENET chip and filter).

It's not ISA though. I think you use ~4 pins on the PIC to control 'em ...plus another eight for the raw data in parallel if you want to send it off-chip to another chip or system (or you could pass it serially ... depending on the actual data rate ... the PICs can do 230Kbaud on RS232, or something like 400K on SPI or I2C ... I don't remember.

The CCS compiler has Ethernet code included for most of the TCP/IP functions and protocols.

Digi-Key, Mouser, and other parts places probably have discreet Ethernet chips and filters. 100 meg is a little ambitious for a PIC though. Their hottest chips still only do 40Mhz.

You might want to look at Zilog, they have Z80 Acclaim! chips (with ethernet) up to 50Mhz. Their Z80 Encore! might be able to do it as well, but I haven't seen it mentioned in the same breath as Ethernet ... so maybe not.

There is a company that makes a "Siteplayer" line that is an embedded Web Server. Their Demo board (ethernet and SitePlayer) is ~US$99.00. I've got one, it's pretty slick. You can use it as a one port term server, or feed it HTML that can read or control several digital outputs (like, have a web page that'll control your thermostat / furnace).

Good Luck.

Scott
 
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