Performa 6400 SSW 7.5.5 Network Card? - Macintosh Garden

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2013, December 13 - 2:21am

#1

kd0tpc

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Joined: 2013 Jul 23

Performa 6400 SSW 7.5.5 Network Card?

I have tryed a number of PCI network cards on my Performa 6400 including one that was made for older Macintosh computers and thus far have had no success in getting any of them to work, even using every variant of the drivers that I can find. I do not know what I should do to correct this trouble.

The Performa 6400 has 96MB of RAM, no Cache DIMM, the original ROM, and no extras. It is running SSW 7.5.5 as some programs crash in OS 8.5.

The main cards that I have tried are based on the RTL chips and I have every version of those drivers that I can find.

Any help would be appreciated, as due to physical space restrictions I have to unhook my G4 to use my Performa, and My G4 is only needed for internet access. It would be easier to just use the Performa (with VPC to use a more current Web browser) and deal with it being slow on the web.

If I could trade my G4 for a good 603/603ev/604 based Mac with a working on board Ethernet adapter I would in a heart beat (do not offer unless you want to pay shipping both ways [I am poor and can not afford shipping]). You see I do not like OS X, and I prefer SSW 7.x (up to OS 8.1). And I do not like the compatibility issues presented by the New World ROM machines. I would much rather use a slow 603 machine with 64MB RAM, than this G4 QuickSilver (733MHz) with 1GB RAM, OS 9.2.2, 32GB HDD, and DVD +/-RW. Sorry.

Again any help would be appreciated.

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2013, December 13 - 7:15am

#2

MikeTomTom's picture

MikeTomTom

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Joined: 2009 Dec 7

The most reliable PCI network cards I've used on older Mac hardware with PCI slots seem to be Kingston 10/100 ethernet cards.

The trick to enable them for me is to use only the Kingston drivers and to disable any Apple Enet drivers via the Extensions Manager (reboot required).

I'd love to have a 6400 in my Mac menagerie

2013, December 13 - 11:09am

#3

Protocol 7's picture

Protocol 7

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I had a Realtek 8169-based PCI card in my 5400. Worked fine with the driver from Realtek. The driver was for OS 9 but I'm pretty sure it worked even with the stock 7.5.3 install.

2013, December 13 - 2:40pm

#4

kd0tpc

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Joined: 2013 Jul 23

I have tried RTL 8139 and RTL 8169, as well as farolon, Kingston, and a few others. I did not try disabling the Apple Enet extension though, thank you (seems obvious in retrospect).

2013, December 14 - 10:22pm

(Reply to #4) #5

MikeTomTom's picture

MikeTomTom

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I did not try disabling the Apple Enet extension though, thank you

YW. I found some install instructions included with one of my enet card drivers, where it mentions:
"The only driver in the Extensions Folder should be the driver used to run the active card. (The Apple Built-in Ethernet Driver, Apple 10/100 Driver, and Apple CS II Driver should be disabled, as well as any other third-party cards)."
I've found this to be necessary with 3rd party PCI enet cards that I've used in Macs, SSW 7.5 to 9.x.

2013, December 14 - 4:37pm

#6

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Protocol 7

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I don't remember having to disable anything. Just drop in the extension and reboot. Check and see if the extension is loading in the first place. If not your card might have a non-standard vendor or device ID. The readme included with the driver details how to edit the extension to add IDs.

2013, December 15 - 3:25am

#7

kd0tpc

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I did finally get an RTL 8139 based device working with SSW 7.5.5, though I can no longer get VPC 2 to work on that system (unknown reason), and I can not find a sufficient Web Browser for the traditional Mac OS. For the last 6 months the updates to various sites makes even Classizila useless (and that requires OS 8.6 or newer).

So I guess that I am stuck using my G4 with Mac OS 9.2.2 as my main OS and a minimal OS X 10.4 for web stuff. It is to bad that Mac OS 8.6 and newer broke so many good applications that worked under OS 8.1 and older .

2013, December 15 - 9:34pm

#8

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MikeTomTom

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...though I can no longer get VPC 2 to work on that system (unknown reason)

Have you tried applying the 2.1.3 update patch for this?