Emeryville, California-based Farallon Computing Inc has joined the Fast Ethernet Alliance and announced plans to add Fast Ethernet products to its range of plug and play networking offerings for the Macintosh market. Details are as yet sketchy, but the company’s initial products will include Peripheral Component Interconnect boards for Power Macintoshes, and NuBus 10/100 boards for Power Macintoshes, Quadras and Macintosh IIs. The new boards will support both 10Base-T and 100base-TX and support 32-bit addressing, says the company. Farallon also intends to release a Fast Ethernet workgroup hub and 10/100 bridge family. The hub will connect Macintoshes and personal computers with any standard 100Base-TX boards boards installed, says the company, while the bridge will link the 100Base-T segment to an existing 10Base-T network. Farallon’s products will be based on 3Com Corp’s Fast Ethernet Parallel Tasking 10/100 technology, which features auto-sensing, dual-speed, and 10/100 adaptors with single RJ-45 connectors, says the company. Farallon has already adopted 3Com’s Fast Ethernet application-specific integrated circuits for its EtherWave personal computer products. The company says its new Fast Ethernet offerings will be compatible with popular network software and support operating systems and application programming interfaces including AppleShare, Mac OS, MacTCP, NetWare, Open Transport and Open Firmware. The NuBus board is set to ship in spring, with the PCI board following in the summer. The hub and bridge products will ship in the second half of 1995. No prices have been announced as yet.
