Apple Attachment Unit Interface
Strange Cable in your Garage?
In the 1990s, if you wanted to connect your Macintosh to a high-speed network you needed 2 things: an AAUI port and an AAUI transceiver. These were available as options on Macintosh Quadra, Centris, PowerBooks 500 series, and some high-end Power Macintosh.
For consumers, having an Ethernet connection wasn't important as high-speed Internet didn't become mainstream until the early 2000s.
Why I Got One
Sometime in the late 1990s, I purchased a Lindsey's AAUI transceiver for my Power Macintosh 8600 computer. I recall that I got this so that I could transfer files between computers in a local network.
When I was actively using my Centris 660av and Power Macintosh 8600, I was still using dial-up. I never took the computers into the office to get on the Internet via Ethernet.
Things I Learned
The unit has two slots one for the "standard" Ethernet 10 Base-T cable and the other for the thin coaxial cabling used for 10Base2 ethernet networking.
The Linksys Transceiver is selling for about $8 on eBay - if you can find someone selling it right now - they are hard to find. ( I don't plan on selling mine!)
The only reason someone would get this today would be to transfer files on a Network.
The AAUI port is unique - check out the photo above on the Centris 660av.
Coming This Spring
Sometime this spring I plan to boot up the Centris 660av and put it on the local network to transfer files. It should be interesting to see how it handles MacOS files.