Well, it looks like there really is an external, pluggable mii bus. On
page 59 of the 1/1/98 EDN is a picture of a Galileo two-port fast
ethernet eval circuit on a PCI card with two external transceivers.

It looks for all the world just like two side-by-side AUI's with two
mini-10BaseT transceivers on it. (The kind that you don't use a cable
with.)

Having said that, I haven't yet seen an actual NIC with an external
PHY, but it kind of looks like the same D connector as the old AUI. My
guess would be that you would first see an external PHY on a garden variety
interface when someone integrates the MAC on a mainboard.

I can only find iEEE 802.3 10BaseT standards around here, if someone has
the 100BaseT document: does it specify a MII D-connector?

Ross Harvey
ross@teraflop.com