Hi Kerry and list. Thanks for sending this response to my and Alex's posts. I was aware that the Realtech 8139 and its relatives weren't in the same league as members of the 3c90x family from 3Com, however; the editional points which you raised Kerry were for the most part things I wasn't aware of so this post is a keeper for me. Luckally in my case my usage for the relatives of the Realtech 8139 are not mission-critical. The nic which receives the greatest load here at my place is eth0 in this Red Hat box and it's a 3c905B. That card has served me well for three years and it probably will for a bit yet. Also just curious, I know that alot of 3com cards have life-time warranties, what's the general consensus regarding warranty on cheaper nics such as the ones we're discussion. Frankly I look at the issue lie this, you get what you pay for so if a Realtech 8139 dies after a year or two you got your money's worth, nevertheless I am curious here and was wondering if anyone on the list knew. Ed Ed Barnes E-mail edbarnes at anomaly.2y.net or ebarnes1 at warp.nfld.net Ph (home) 709-596-3165 or (cell) 709-683-6085 http://anomaly.2y.net "Money will buy you a pretty good dog, but it won't buy the wag of his tail." --- unknown On Sun, 19 May 2002, Kerry Hoath wrote: > 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. > >
