Asante MacCon MC3NB 10Base 2 (Thinnet)

Asante MacCon MC3NB REV. B1 1991....with 10Base 2 connector
Edit: thanx for the information all

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Comments

cwsmith's picture

It's an old network card -- the coaxial connector was common before the RJ-45 (10/100/1000 Base T Ethernet) connector gained favor. I have a couple of network switches that have a coax port as well, so you can connect an older "token ring" network to your 10-Base T network.

Jon's picture

It's not really token ring but more of a continuous bus for Thinnet. Think of it more like the old LocalTalk setup. Token ring networks generally used various connectors like a 9-pin D-sub to connect in a star fashion to a MAU.

i can remember in school we had a room full of old PC's that used those cards, they were daisy chained i think. very odd. i can also remember appletalk networks Smile and trying to play multiplayer games of marathon over them, horribly slow.....

dankephoto's picture

it's called. The other port on your card is called AUI, to which you can hook an AUI transceiver (similar to Apple's AAUI jobbie.)

dan k

davintosh's picture

it's called. The other port on your card is called AUI, to which you can hook an AUI transceiver (similar to Apple's AAUI jobbie.)

Ack. Thinnet is the most horrid invention ever. I kinda got thrown into my first Mac admin job (1994) when the previous guy left suddenly, and spent a frantic night trying to move a printer to another spot in the room, which meant rearranging the thinnet just a little. It went very poorly.

We had been planning on migrating to ethernet in the next month, and had most of the equipment on hand to do the job, plus had new Cat. 5 in the walls. So with all the thinnet trouble I decided to make the move a little early. Dang if it didn't work out better that way. I had spent about five hours trying to get the thinnet working; it took another hour and a half to unpack the switches, install a few ethernet cards & software, install a couple of media converters on the older gear, and hook up the patch cables. And it worked the first time.

Boy do I like ethernet!

dankephoto's picture

10Base2 thinnet IS ethernet, just a different (and nowadays considered horrid Acute ) physical implimentation. What nowadays y'all consider ETHERNET is 10BaseT (or 100BaseTX) using CAT-3/5/5e/6 unshielded Twisted Pair (UTP) cabling, with the familiar 8P8C RJ-45 connector. Just another of several possible physical implimentations.

The wikipedia page on OSI (Open Systems Interconnection Reference Model) is also worth a read.

dan k (call me Mr. Link Crazy Acute )