The card in this box right now is a tulip base linksys lne100tx card. They run around $20. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Kerry Hoath" <kerry@xxxxxxxxx> To: <speakup at braille.uwo.ca> Sent: Sunday, May 19, 2002 9:39 AM Subject: Nics and their relative value > You are perhapse using these cards in low usage conditions or do not use > multicast. > The rtl8139 a/b/c is a low cost connectivity solution for 100 megabit networks. > It is a cheap chip and for that reason has appeared on many oem designs and cards. > It has a 64-slot multicast filter that takes the intermediate result after crc and uses > that as a hash into a table. It works well enough > but does not filter anywhere as well as the tulip or 3com designs. > Although the 8139 chips are a pci-bus master, I have noticed negative > performance situations where mp3s broke up when copying large amounts over > a network under Windows. > Upgrading drivers helped aleviate the problem but did not fix it and system performance > was far better with the 3com 3c9x cards in them. > > Older machines can have problems with the rtl parts, especially > if they do not support apm correctly. The 8139 chip goes to sleep and > crashes the box. > Replace the card with an rtl8029 or a tulip or a 3com which doesn't insist on > doing PCI pwer management and the problem goes away. > > On your home network copying a few files around at 10 megabit or under low load > the cards might seem fine, but don't put them in a file server > or where performance is critical. > Cards that cost $10-$20US are not and never will be as higher performing as cards > that cost $50-$100. > Regarding the ne2000; now there was a completely cheap and > nasty chip design that was adopted by manifacturers because it > was associated with novell. National Semiconductors > took the simplest ethernet chip design and put out the 8390 chip. > It was cheap, it worked and it was clonable. It wasn't high performance, > it wasn't bug free and it wasn't the fastest card ont he block > either. > If you intend low use or only a few hundred megs across your network per day, > a realtek or ne2000 might suit you fine; but for the serious > network card purchaser, get n intel card or tulip-based > design. > Don't get me started on tranceiver failure. At $1 I expect you can tolerate some of these though; > just get lots of cards. > Never forget: > Good, fast, cheap; pick two. > On Sun, May 19, 2002 at 08:53:02AM -0400, Alex Snow wrote: > > I will be ordering a few of those cards, and if they don't work in my linux > > box like I think they will, I'll put them in my winblows machine. I have > > used a d-link dfe538 card, with no problems till it got hit by lightning > > last summer. I have also used some 3com cards like the 3c9 series, and a > > few etherlink 3s. I have not seen much of a difference. > > ----- Original Message ----- > > From: "Ed Barnes" <edbarnes at anomaly.2y.net> > > To: <speakup at braille.uwo.ca> > > Sent: Sunday, May 19, 2002 3:12 AM > > Subject: Re: nic at real cheap price > > > > > > > Hi folks, I have to join on this thread in defense of Rol. > > > Those Realtech's work with kernel 2.4 and they worked with 2.2 as well > > > according to documentation. > > > I say that they worked according to docs with 2.2 because my first work > > > with Linux was recently so it was 2.4. > > -- > Kerry Hoath: kerry at gotss.net kerry at gotss.eu.org or kerry at gotss.spice.net.au > ICQ: 8226547 msn: kerry at gotss.net Yahoo: kerryhoath at yahoo.com.au > > _______________________________________________ > Speakup mailing list > Speakup at braille.uwo.ca > http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup >
