Paul Koning wrote:
I'm afraid you're right, at least in some versions. Not very well,
because
that
interface is single buffered.
I think the 3C501 was one of the very early ISA bus Ethernet cards, wasn't
it? It certainly preceded the DEPCA. At one place I worked in the mid-late
80s we had a bunch of the 3Com cards and used DECnet/DOS. I don't remember
having any serious problems with it, but we didn't have that much network
traffic. As they say, it was enough that the bear could dance at all; it
didn't matter that it couldn't dance well.
I was looking around and the README file in the archive for DECnet/DOS
v2.0 (it's on diskette #9) has some tips for tuning the 3C501 card, so it
clearly was supported in that release.
I also see that the release notes for DECnet/DOS v1.0 have a lot of stuff
about the Rainbow, but in v2.0 all mention of the Rainbow seems to have
disappeared. I guess that's when DEC dropped it and it's probably why I
never saw it before.
Bob