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IBM PS/2 MCA network board (IBM 00G3368 bus master network adapter)

R

rvdbijl

Experienced Member
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May 8, 2017
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Location
NH, USA
Hi Everyone!

I had a friend donate an old PS/2 Model 80, which had some MCA network boards in it (a 3270 emulator and Token Ring board). I would like to hook it up to my "vintage computer network", but needed an Ethernet board. Without doing a ton of research, I found an IBM 00G3368 bus master MCA board on eBay. Took a little while to find the ADF file for it, but once I found that, it was recognized by the BIOS. Now I'm looking for drivers (NDIS or ODI for the MS Dos client, or even Win 3.11 or Win 95). I haven't been able to find anything for this board at all.

Oddly enough, the components and board layout look very similar (Just some IC's have a different version, but are the same part number. Board layout is identical.) to the 3COM 3C527, for which I have found drivers. They don't like this board though... I suspect that <maybe> swapping ROMs on this board for the 3C527 ROMs will make this board into a 3C527.....

So two questions to the group -- Anyone have drivers for DOS, Win 3.11 or 95 for this IBM flavor board? And secondly, does anyone have a ROM dump for the two ROMs on the 3C527 MCA board?

Thanks!!
 
I think you're right that this is an RS6000 version. I've seen that mentioned before.

Haven't tried the 3C523 / 3C529 drivers, but I did try the 3C527 drivers from that same page. And those definitely don't work. The diagnostic tool says the board isn't there...

Attached are a couple of pics of the board. It REALLY looks like the 3C527.

20190810_141142271_iOS.jpg
20190810_141144904_iOS.jpg

I got the ADF from here: http://www.mcamafia.de/mcapage0/mcaindex.htm
ID was 8EF5.

Of course I could go buy another MCA network board off eBay for $50 and I'm sure that'll work. But it's kinda fun trying to get this one to work...
 
rvdbijl said:
I think you're right that this is an RS6000 version. I've seen that mentioned before.

Haven't tried the 3C523 / 3C529 drivers, but I did try the 3C527 drivers from that same page. And those definitely don't work. The diagnostic tool says the board isn't there...

Attached are a couple of pics of the board. It REALLY looks like the 3C527.

View attachment 1031545
View attachment 1031546

I got the ADF from here: http://www.mcamafia.de/mcapage0/mcaindex.htm
ID was 8EF5.

Of course I could go buy another MCA network board off eBay for $50 and I'm sure that'll work. But it's kinda fun trying to get this one to work...
Click to expand...
Hi there! I've just found myself today in exactly the same situation as yourself. I was wondering if you ever managed to find any drivers that will live with this card in either a dos or windows 3x/95 environment? I've fiddled with the .adf files to try and spoof the machine, but the 3com driver (I found it on ardent.com) still hates it ;)

Cheers! Alison
 
alitel said:
Hi there! I've just found myself today in exactly the same situation as yourself. I was wondering if you ever managed to find any drivers that will live with this card in either a dos or windows 3x/95 environment? I've fiddled with the .adf files to try and spoof the machine, but the 3com driver (I found it on ardent.com) still hates it ;)

Cheers! Alison
Click to expand...
Hi Alison,

Unfortunately, no -- I was never able to get this board to work in that machine. I no longer have the MCA machine either, but I do still have the board. ;)
 
Hi! Thanks for replying! That's too bad, but I'm not surprised -- I've not been able to find anything at all online as a driver to run it in the x86 world. I DID find an actual 3COM retail version of the board on ebay tho, and have ordered it. When it arrives, I'm going to try a ROM swap to see if that works. I've also started disassembling the 3com retail driver to see if I can tweak it, but for me that's new territory, so I might not get far. Interesting puzzle :)

Cheers! Alison
 
alitel said:
Hi! Thanks for replying! That's too bad, but I'm not surprised -- I've not been able to find anything at all online as a driver to run it in the x86 world. I DID find an actual 3COM retail version of the board on ebay tho, and have ordered it. When it arrives, I'm going to try a ROM swap to see if that works. I've also started disassembling the 3com retail driver to see if I can tweak it, but for me that's new territory, so I might not get far. Interesting puzzle :)

Cheers! Alison
Click to expand...
Keep me posted, I have two of these myself and was never able to get them to do anything with the 3com drivers. If a ROM swap is all that is required please share the binaries!
 
Hi there, will absolutely share the binaries -- I found an entry on the retro web for the commercial 3com card, which lacked the binaries, so will upload them there regardless, but will also update this thread with whatever happens :)

3com card should arrive next week (shipping to canada from the states is a leisurely process at best :)

Cheers! A
 
Hi all -- the 3com retail Etherlink mc/32 card arrived. Here are the ROMS from it -- I will also try to upload to the retroweb. I haven't yet had a chance to try them out in the IBM busmaster card.

The EVEN rom is in socket 2B, odd in 1B on the card I received (https://www.ardent-tool.com/NIC/3c527.html)



Cheers! Alison
 

Attachments

  • 3com-3C527-EtherLinkMC32-ROMS.zip
    9 KB · Views: 1
Did a quick ROM swap-out and unsurprisingly, it's gonna take more than that :) I think the "easiest" course of action will be hacking the 3com DOS/Windows driver. Probably beyond my skillset, but I will put it on the "take a look" list!
 
Did the ADF ID of the card change to the 3Com card's @0041 when you swapped the ROM? Its very likely the driver is doing a card scan and expecting to find something with the 3Com card's original ID.
 
No, the ROM switch had no effect on the card identity, it was still seen as the @8ef5 ibm card. Looking at the first few lines of the ROMS for the two types of card, they are both "Can't Say" roms by 3com -- the IBM card has version 1.1n and the 3COM card has 1.1p (I think). The roms do appear to be different (nothing like a binary match), though how significantly I didn't investigate. What we need here is someone who's far better than I using Ghidra or equivalent to disassemble the 3com driver. Once we have (somewhat) readable assembly code, I think we'd have a chance at patching the driver to work with the IBM card's POS.
 
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