10base-2 to 10base-t media convertor?

[Tony Duell]

> I wonder if you could use an old network card that had both 10Base2 
> and 10BaseT connections.  I had an old Ansel ISA card with 4 10Base2 
> ports and 1 10BaseT and I've used it that way.

That sounds as though your caard had a built-in hub (was it really 4 BNCs 
and one RJ45? I tould have thought the other way round would be more useful).

Mot cards with 2 network connectors (say 10base2 and 10baseT) simply have 
the transceiver circuitry for each netowrk type, and a set of links to 
connect either (but not both) to the ehternet chip. Now, you can't simply 
connect 2 transceivers back-to-back to make a network converter, you need 
a vit of loginc [1] to hanclde collisions, etc. And that logic wouldn't 
be presset on a normal network card.

[]] I have an old device desigend to link a pair of transceivers (it has 
a couple of AUI connectors on the back). It's quite complicated, there's 
a RAM-based state machine linked to a couple of ehternet encoder/decoder 
ICs, and a Z80-based microconttoller system to load the state machine RAM.

So I doubt you could use a network card as a media converter

Of course that logic is present in the chip you find in a 10baseT hub, 
which is why you can use one of those as a converter.

-tony