MPL4351

High Performance Ethernet Board

The MPL4351 is a high performance Ethernet board for the G-64/96 bus. It is based on the AMD-LANCE Ethernet chipset which shares a dualport memory (up to 1MByte) with the G-64/96 bus. For network addresses and other parameters an EEPROM is implemented on the board. The MPL4351 occupies 128 or 512 kWords of VMA and 8 words of VPA address space. The MPL4351 supports both the Ethernet and Cheapernet standards.

Technical Features

Eurocard format (100 x 160 mm)
G-64/96 specified bus interface
LANCE Ethernet chipset
compatible with Ethernet and IEEE-802.3 10Base5 Type A, and 10Base2 Type B ("Cheapernet")
10Mbits/sec transfer rate
64k, 256k or 1M byte of fast dualport RAM (16bit wide)
RAM can also be used as system memory
1Kbit of EEPROM
vectored or auto-vectored interrupts
AUI interface for transceivers

General Information

The MPL4351 board has been designed as a high performance interface to Ethernet LANs.

The Am7990 Ethernet controller and the G-64/96 bus share the same dualport RAM. The Am7990 and the processor communicate via this memory, i.e. initialization data, data descriptors, receive and transmit data are stored in the RAM. For storing the Ethernet address and other possible data an EEPROM is available on the MPL4351. The first words of this EEPROM are programmed with the Ethernet address, the rest are free for User data. The MPL4351 memory and control registers are accessible through its G-64/96 bus interface in asynchronous mode. The RAM is organized 16 bit wide dualport memory for most efficient data communication with the Ethernet controller chip.

As interface to the network a connector is available which permits the use of a direct ribbon cable to attach a standard 15pin AUI connector. This allows the use of 10Base5, 10Base2, 10BaseT or fiber-optical transceivers.

Vectored or autovectored interrupts are available for the Am7990 chip. For vectored interrupts the G-64/96 daisy-chain is implemented.

Further Documentation

Manuals, Data Sheets, and Press Releases can be found in the MPL Documentation area of this homepage.