On 29 Jun 2003 at 16:22, James Miller wrote: >I recently acquired an old (looks new though - perhaps only used by >someone's grandmother to check her email on alternate Sundays) PCMCIA NIC: >IBM Credit Card Adaptor Ethernet 2. I guess that means it's 10 base2. >Has a dongle with a rather largish black plastic box on the end with what >I guess they call a BNC connector (female) on it. Of course I can't plug >any sort of coaxial cable directly into my fairly new hub, which has only >rj45 plugs on it. So, I'm just wondering if there are BNC to rj45 >adaptors that could help me get this card operational on my network? Any >other gotchas involved in trying to mix coaxial and UTP networking stuff?
Yes, there are adaptors to convert from 10Base-2 (BNC) to 10Base-T (RJ45) Ethernet networking. I actually have one which I'm currently using in my home network. However, they are basically small network switches, and they are hard to come by these days, unless you happen find a used one. You're probably just as well off to look for a small used switch. There were quite a few manufactured with one BNC port and four or eight 10Base-T ports, for small home or office networks. Netgear made several models, as I recall, as did other manufacturers. Depending on the resources in your area, you may be able to find one for as little as US$10-25 (used). Another possibility is to set up a desktop computer with both BNC and 10Base-T cards, and software to turn it into a router. If you've got a spare 386-based system, this might be the cheapest option. I'd suggest Linux for this, though I believe that there is software for various versions of Windows. There's probably even DOS router software out there. Here's a reference page I found with a quick Google search: http://www.nsrc.org/lowcost_tools/net-tech.html Check out the "Low-Cost TCP/IP Routerware" section. >Relatedly, while researching adaptors I ran across some thingies and am >just trying to confirm what they are and what they do. These are a >plastic housing that covers a plug for DB9 or DB25 ports, and in the >housing is an rj45 jack. It looks like these things are made for plugging >UTP network cables into serial or parallel ports. Has anyone seen or used >these? Can anyone help me understand what they are for? Are they for >doing networking via serial or parallel port, as opposed to through a NIC? > >Thanks for any help in clarifying this dilemma. >James I'm going to make a guess that this is a serial cable, most often used for connecting a PC to a device that does serial communications over an RJ45 jack. Most frequently, I've seen that type of cable used to talk to dumb terminals, switches, routers, and various high end telecom gear. Or, sometimes, to odd, special-purpose scientific or other gear. Hope this helps, Anthony J. Albert =========================================================== Anthony J. Albert [EMAIL PROTECTED] Systems and Software Support Specialist Postmaster Computer Services - University of Maine, Presque Isle "This is only temporary, unless it works." --- Red Green To unsubscribe from SURVPC send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with unsubscribe SURVPC in the body of the message. Also, trim this footer from any quoted replies. More info can be found at; http://www.softcon.com/archives/SURVPC.html
