How important is pin 4 for the ethernet shield?

Projects Networking, Protocols, and Devices
1

Hi,

I want to use the ethernet shield in combination with the Mux shield. But both shields are using pin 4.

The ethernet shield is only using pin 4 to switch between the network and the sd card, but I'm not using the sd card.

Is it then a good idea to just bend pin 4 so that the signal doesn't reach the ethernet shield?

Or are there better solutions?

Thanks,

Emiel

2

You can always try it. If you do decide to "pin bend", I recommend connecting pin 4 on the ethernet shield to +5v with a resistor. That will insure the SD SPI interface is disabled. That will prevent the possibility of any interference on the SPI bus.