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Of course the ISA-ethernet-cards still work, but people are asking
for PCI-based ones. The author of many (if not most) ethernet-
drivers said the following some time ago (unfortunately I have not managed
to contact him about new information):
From: Donald Becker (becker at cesdis.gsfc.nasa.gov)
Subject: PCI ethernet cards supported?
The LANCE code has been extended to handle the PCI version.
I hope to get the PCI probe code (about a dozen extra lines in the LANCE
driver) into the next kernel version.
I'm working on the 32 bit mode code.
I haven't yet started the 21040 code.
I'll write drivers for the PCnet32 mode and the DEC 21040. That
will cover most of the PCI ethercard market.
file://cesdis.gsfc.nasa.gov/pub/people/becker/whoiam.html
In the new testkernels of 1.1.50 and above, the AMD-singlechip
ethernetadapters are supported. With a pentium, they ought to then see
900K/second ftps +(assuming an NCR PCI scsi controller) at about 20%
cpu load. (AMD Lance).
Anything based on the AMD PCnet/PCI chip should work at the time
being. In the US the Boca board costs under US$ 70
Geoffry Coram reported in the news that he got his 3com 590 TPO to work. He
had to get the alpha driver from http://cesdis.gsfc.nasa.gov/linux/drivers.
Other drivers would be there as well.
Note http://cesdis.gsfc.nasa.gov/linux/drivers/vortex.html
Donald Holmgren said he successfully attached his DEC DE435 (PCI) card to
the local network on thin coax (BNC). The DE435 driver checks
the twisted pair connection first, then switches to the
alternate port (jumper selectable as AUI or BNC) if the
10BaseT port fails.
Jim Cusick uses the Boca BEN 1PI card on a thin coax network.
It works just fine. You might want to check out:
http://cesdis.gsfc.nasa.gov/linux/misc/boca-failure.html
for details on the early failures of this card. My second card, after
sending one back for replacement, was marked "PN 4186". The old one
that did not work was "PN 4185". Mandate this newer model when you order
from you vendor. At $ 70, the card is a good deal.
Dave Platt recommends to stay off the Boca BEN1PI card at all costs. It would
be unreliable due to design flaws, and Boca seems unable to really fix the
problem. The 3Com 3c590 "Vortex" PCI card is available in a combo version
(10BaseT, thin coax, and AUI). The Linux driver for this card is not
yet part of the release kernel, but is available from
http://cesdis.gsfc.nasa.gov/linux/drivers/vortex.html and can be patched
into the later 1.2.x kernels (as well as 1.3.x) without much difficulty.
The Linux driver does not support the interface autodetect feature of
this card - you must use the DOS utility to configure the card for the
interface you wish to use (thin coax in this case). Once you've done
that, the Linux driver will use the correct interface.
He has been using a 3c590 for several weeks, and it is working fine.
Dave Kennedy said he got two of the above Boca boards and they work fine under
light load, but under heavy work like ftping two 16M files into both
directions, they failed. He sent the boards back to Boca for a
hardwarefix. After they soldered a couple of things (diodes/resistors)
onto the card and sent them back, the cards worked fine regardless of
load. The two cards have been in 7/24 use in two P90 systems without
problems for 6 months now.
Craig does not recommend it since Boca seems not to follow the
AMD specs but he has been running them for 2 weeks without problems. He tested
his NFS performance and has been moving large files to and from server (16M, 8M).
He also tried to do all his workin localy using his data files mounted by NFS
and has had no problems. Performance seems to be 100 percent better (wrt to NFS performance)
over his NE2000 ISA board. (editors note: but so would probably have been
the ISA SMC Elite Ultra?)
Someone on usenet mentioned ht used the 3Com-3C590-TPO (EtherLink III - PCI).
He had to get the "3c59x.c" driver and "vortex.patch" to make it work with
his 1.2.8 Linux kernel.
The DEC435 PCI NIC is said to work great with the drivers included
in the Slackwaredistribution - I'd say they are in the standard-kernel?
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