Very Computer

by **Frank Wegman** » Sat, 11 Mar 2000 04:00:00

I want to set up a 486 VLB as FreeBSD box and need some advice
concerning
an Ethernet card for the ISA bus. There are not many of them left on the
(German)
market, most notably the 3C509B, and a few NE2000-compatible ones such
as the
D-Link DE-220PCT (costing a 1/4 of the 3com card).

In the news archive I saw that people had a variety of problems with the
3c509b, and
would be glad if anyone could comment on this topic. The 486 will be
connected to
a Cisco 771 (ISDN router with integrated 10BaseT hub) if that is of any
importance.

For me it's important that the card is reliable in that configuration.
Speed is
important, but comes next.

Thanks a lot,

Frank

by **Kristian Ra** » Sat, 11 Mar 2000 04:00:00

Hi

On Fri, 10 Mar 2000 10:46:55 +0100, Frank Wegmann

>an Ethernet card for the ISA bus. There are not many of them left on the
>(German) market, most notably the 3C509B, and a few NE2000-compatible
>ones such
>as the >D-Link DE-220PCT (costing a 1/4 of the 3com card).
>In the news archive I saw that people had a variety of problems with the
>3c509b, and >would be glad if anyone could comment on this topic. The 486 will be
>connected to >a Cisco 771 (ISDN router with integrated 10BaseT hub) if that is of any
>importance.

Go to computer dump/s*site and yank out an old
SMC / Western Digital 8013 (EB/ET/EBT/ etc :)

It can be soft configured for nearly all irq's etc. and has a
jumper setting too - allowing you to select 2 predefined configs or
the softset config. The card uses shared memory - so in my not to
complete tech. understanding - the buffers are simply mem copied
to / from the relevant location. This is not DMA (might be though - as
the mem copy could be performed as such - but anyhow it should give
your machine some extra processing resources compared to any and all
pio mode nic's - also the onboard/inmem buffers (afair) are 16 KB. so
one would think that irq servicing latency becomes less important..

Maybe there is a 8013 nic driver writer that would care to shed some
light on the topic ?

regards

Kristian

by **Alan Core** » Sat, 11 Mar 2000 04:00:00

> I want to set up a 486 VLB as FreeBSD box and need some advice
> concerning
> an Ethernet card for the ISA bus. There are not many of them left on the
> (German)
> market, most notably the 3C509B, and a few NE2000-compatible ones such
> as the
> D-Link DE-220PCT (costing a 1/4 of the 3com card).

> In the news archive I saw that people had a variety of problems with the
> 3c509b, and
> would be glad if anyone could comment on this topic. The 486 will be
> connected to
> a Cisco 771 (ISDN router with integrated 10BaseT hub) if that is of any
> importance.

> For me it's important that the card is reliable in that configuration.
> Speed is
> important, but comes next.

> Thanks a lot,

> Frank

I'll cast my vote for an NE2000 clone. I've got 4 of them now, all
working fine, plus a PCMCIA version (DLink DE-660). My latest
acquisition cost me $2 plus shipping from a USENET deal where someone was
selling off a long list of stuff.

The only issues I can think of are that under some circumstances putting
more than one NE2000 card in a machine can be a problem and that not all
of them may be full-duplex. Its older, proven, technology, and you'll
find drivers in just about every operating system.

IMHO the 3Com stuff is overpriced and has at least as many problems as
generic stuff.

Alan Corey

----------------------------------------------------------------------
It's time to FDISK Microsoft and reformat.

by **Christian Weisgerb** » Sat, 11 Mar 2000 04:00:00

Quote:> I want to set up a 486 VLB as FreeBSD box and need some advice
> concerning an Ethernet card for the ISA bus.

Get a used WD8013 card (e.g. SMC Elite) at the local flea market.
These things have been around for many years, are supported by
everything calling itself an operating system that has some kind
of ethernet support, and due to their shared memory architecture
they're reasonable performers, as far as that is possible with ISA
hardware.

[I didn't read the rest of your article because of the illegible line
wrapping you chose to use.]
--

by **Charli** » Sat, 11 Mar 2000 04:00:00

visit debris.org. Bob has lots of sun, sgi, (sometimes intergraph) servers,
and tons of pc's (486, pentium, a quad pentium pro box) and tons of nic's.

Honest and very reasonable prices.

Quote:> I want to set up a 486 VLB as FreeBSD box and need some advice
> concerning
> an Ethernet card for the ISA bus. There are not many of them left on the
> (German)
> market, most notably the 3C509B, and a few NE2000-compatible ones such
> as the
> D-Link DE-220PCT (costing a 1/4 of the 3com card).

> In the news archive I saw that people had a variety of problems with the
> 3c509b, and
> would be glad if anyone could comment on this topic. The 486 will be
> connected to
> a Cisco 771 (ISDN router with integrated 10BaseT hub) if that is of any
> importance.

> For me it's important that the card is reliable in that configuration.
> Speed is
> important, but comes next.

> Thanks a lot,

> Frank

by **Mark A-J. Raugh** » Sun, 12 Mar 2000 04:00:00

I have a 486 VLB system running FreeBSD for a couple years now. Never had
any problems... I use a D-Link DE-220 and it gets the job done fine. I don't
know about the Plug and Play part of it, I have that disabled, but once I
got it going, (early in my "new" FreeBSD life) it has just kept going... and
going... etc. After years, still no problems. Any specific questions just
let me know, I'll try to help.

-mark

> I want to set up a 486 VLB as FreeBSD box and need some advice
> concerning
> an Ethernet card for the ISA bus. There are not many of them left on the
> (German)
> market, most notably the 3C509B, and a few NE2000-compatible ones such
> as the
> D-Link DE-220PCT (costing a 1/4 of the 3com card).

> In the news archive I saw that people had a variety of problems with the
> 3c509b, and
> would be glad if anyone could comment on this topic. The 486 will be
> connected to
> a Cisco 771 (ISDN router with integrated 10BaseT hub) if that is of any
> importance.

> For me it's important that the card is reliable in that configuration.
> Speed is
> important, but comes next.

> Thanks a lot,

> Frank

by **n..** » Sun, 12 Mar 2000 04:00:00

> I want to set up a 486 VLB as FreeBSD box and need some advice
> concerning an Ethernet card for the ISA bus. There are not many of
> them left on the (German) market, most notably the 3C509B, and a few
> NE2000-compatible ones such as the D-Link DE-220PCT (costing a 1/4 of
> the 3com card).

> In the news archive I saw that people had a variety of problems with
> the 3c509b, and would be glad if anyone could comment on this topic.
> The 486 will be connected to a Cisco 771 (ISDN router with integrated
> 10BaseT hub) if that is of any importance.

> For me it's important that the card is reliable in that configuration.
> Speed is important, but comes next.

SMC 8216. Disable PnP and put it in memory mapped mode. This
particular ISA NIC has a 16K shared memory space. The rest generally
have 8K. This will give you some performance increase.
--

JCA

There's the Linux way, Microsoft way and the right way.

Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.

by **Daniel Ts'** » Sun, 12 Mar 2000 04:00:00

Quote:>I want to set up a 486 VLB as FreeBSD box and need some advice
>concerning
>an Ethernet card for the ISA bus. There are not many of them left on the
>(German)
>market, most notably the 3C509B, and a few NE2000-compatible ones such
>as the
>D-Link DE-220PCT (costing a 1/4 of the 3com card).

>In the news archive I saw that people had a variety of problems with the
>3c509b, and
>would be glad if anyone could comment on this topic.

Under these types of situations, I have used the 3com 3c509 the most,
NE2000 2nd and WD/SMC 8013 3rd. Generally I have had good luck with the
3c509, although once or twice there have been problems (say 2 out of 15
systems). Probably these 2 cases were marginal 3c509 cards. 3c509 cards
are readily available for $10-20.

NE2000 cards have also worked quite well. There is more variability as to
how to set up such cards up since they come from all different companies.
The WD 8013 is also a good choice as well but harder to get.

Performance-wise, the 3c509 are usually good, but never tops. The NE2000
and WD8013 have ranged from good to tops (saturates a 10Mbit Ethernet).

Cheers,

The Rockefeller University, 1230 York Ave MS138, NY, NY 10021
212-327-7671, FAX: 212-327-7671

by **User Wegman** » Tue, 14 Mar 2000 04:00:00

Thanx for your answers folks. I tried to locate a SMC card, but had
no luck. So my first shot is now a NE2000 clone (from CNet) that I
purchased for about 14 US-$, and it just worked without any hassle.
If I could get a SMC WD8013 I'll try it anyway to see if there are
any performance improvements.

Frank

by **J Wuns** » Sun, 19 Mar 2000 04:00:00

> If I could get a SMC WD8013 I'll try it anyway to see if there are
> any performance improvements.

There will be, yes, mainly because the NE2k uses programmed IO and
thus eats up tons of CPU (on the ISA bus, each IO cycle costs a lot of
time -- PCI NE2k clones are much better in this respect).

--
cheers, J"org / 73 de DL8DTL

Never trust an operating system you don't have sources for. ;-)

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