What is a Smartnet Arnet card?

From: Joe <rigdonj_at_cfl.rr.com>
Date: Fri Apr 18 07:23:48 2003

At 12:35 PM 4/18/03 +0100, Rob wrote:
>At 15:42 17/04/2003 +0000, you wrote:
>
>> Found this this morning. Full length 16 ISAcard for a PC. Marked
>> "Arnet Smartport" "Made in USA" and "Copyright 1985 Arnet Corporation".
>> It has a daughterboard marked "Arnet Smart Plus 4". The main board has
>> two copper shielded 34 pin ribbon cables that extend out the back panel.
>> Snybody know what this is?
>>
>> Joe
>
>It's a serial expansion unit. The ribbon cables connect to a "black box"
>with 4 (or 8) DB25 connectors on it. Lots of jumpers on the back to swap
>pins about for DCE/DTE/combinations, but otherwise no electronics in there.
>
>The unit is a 4 port, and you add the expansion card to make it up to eight.
>
>The Smart port has intelligence on it, to take the load off the
>machine. They did a Multiport version which was just multiple plain old
>ports that you could address as serial ports at whatever IO addresses you
>configured the card at. The Smart port would need drivers installing.
>
>We used to use a lot of them in days when we ran multi-user operating
>systems on 8086/286/386 servers!
>
>There is a large box full of cards, and even more of the external boxes at
>the office. Manuals too.
>
>I've also got the Smartport SCO-Xenix drivers, and the diagnostic disc in
>front of me here (were in the same box as the wyse setup discs I posted
>earlier).
>
>If you want copies, etc., let me know! If you want an external box, I can
>do that too, for the cost of shipping.
>
>Regards
>
>Rob.
>

    Thanks for the offer but I don't need the card. Do you want it? FWIW this was in an old Compaq 386 DeskPro (386 20 I think).

    Joe
Received on Fri Apr 18 2003 - 07:23:48 BST