At 12:50 AM 5/10/99 -0500, Jacob Walcik wrote:
>If it's a netgear card you may have to use the special version of the
>tulip driver that came on the floppy accompanying the card. At some
>point, Bay Networks stopped using the DEC chipset and started using a
>different chipset to emulate it. After switching to the driver off the
>disk, everything worked fine.
In doing my own research on netcards I came across the following on
Dejanews which gives a little more insight into the issue.
>"Dave McGuriman" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
>> [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Ntbod) wrote:
>>
>>> I've seen these 10/100 NICs selling for $30 each. NICs from Intel and
3com
>>> cost at least twice as much. Is there a significant difference? Does
the
>>> Netgear NIC use alot more cpu time? Is there something I should be
aware of?
>
>You get what you pay for with respect to network hardware. The Netgear
NICs
>were good at one time. Revision C6.1 and older cards use the DEC 21140
>ethernet controller. The newer NICs use the Lite-On PNIC ethernet cards.
>The reason for this is that Compaq (formerly Digital Semiconductor) sold
the
>ethernet and PCI component division to Intel. Intel is quietly
discontinuing
>the DEC 21x4x PCI ethernet controller line in favor of their i8255x
product.
>
>If you've bought an older DEC based Netgear FA310TX and you need to have
it
>replaced under warranty, it will be replaced with a PNIC based card.
>
>The DEC 21x4x ethernet controller was a popular chip to use in NICs.
D-Link,
>Linksys Kingston, SMC, SOHOware and SVEC (Hawking) used them in along with
>Netgear. Now because of Intel's aquisition the NIC manufacturers who were
>using this chip have had to use something else. Generally the Lite-On
PNIC
>or the Macronix.
>
>To most people who are running Win9x then this is not significant, but if
>you're running something else this may be of a concern to you. This
created
>a pretty big stink in the *nix world until the PNIC and Macronix drivers
were
>written. When you start to analyze the performance and read the release
notes
>for the new drivers you find that these alternative ethernet controllers
are
>not as good as their predecessor.
Lindsay Haisley (______)
FMP Computer Services (oo) "The bull
[EMAIL PROTECTED] /------\/ stops here!"
Austin, Texas, USA / | ||
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