Santa Clara, California-based 3Com Corp has announced EtherLink/MC 32, a 32-bit bus master Ethernet adaptor for Micro Channel-based personal computers. The EtherLink/MC 32, says 3Com, combines high-performance with ease of configuration, proven reliability and third-party network software support. According to marketing director Dave de Puy, benchmark tests performed by San Jose, California-based LANQuest Inc have shown EtherLink/MC 32 to perform 60% better than Anthem Electronics Inc’s NE/2-32 and 94% better than Western Digital’s EtherCard Plus/A. It features the same design and 32-bit bus master technology as IBM’s High-Performance Ethernet LAN Adaptor, which 3Com has been supplying for IBM’s RS/6000 since 1989 – even though it wasn’t launched until 1990. EtherLink/MC 32 enables more users to be installed per adaptor segment and more adaptors per server without a reduction in network performance. The performance of the EtherLink/MC 32 has been verified by Novell Inc test labs – Novell engineers developed the product’s NetWare 386 server driver. EtherLink/MC 32 operates in networks using twisted-pair, fibre optic and coaxial cabling schemes and can be connected to 10Base-T networks via 3Com’s EtherLink TP Transceiver, or fibre optic or thick Ethernet networks via other external transceivers. EtherLink/MC 32 is available now in the US at $900. The product is bundled with drivers for NetWare 386 servers and for Network Driver Interface Specification-compliant software in both MS-DOS and OS/2 versions.
