8 Dec
2006
8 Dec
'06
3:51 a.m.
Tothwolf wrote:
All of the 3Com cards are software configurable. The
utilities and
drivers are even available on 3Com's FTP site :)
I know they used to be (as of a few years ago) but I was surprised even then
given how long in the tooth they were. I wasn't sure if 3com would have pulled
the availability of the utilities by now, but luckily it seems not :)
I thought I'd seen an Etherlink III variant that was configured via jumpers
rather than software in the past; anyone know if I imagined that?
The 3C905 is the faster of the 3Com cards you have
there, as it supports
100mb.
They used to be my preferred 100Mbit card because I knew they were reliable
under Linux, to be honest - I've got a few kicking around in various PCs that
I've put together over the years. These days Linux supports such a huge range
of NICs that it's less of an issue!
The Etherlink XL 3C900, etc also tended to work pretty
well,
though they are limited to 10mb. The Etherlink III series 3C509, 3C509B
are also very well, supported, though again limited to 10mb. I'd choose
a 509B over the original 509 if you need to go with an ISA card though,
as it has FIFO support.
My firewall's got three 509 boards in it (10Mbit not an issue when the cable
modem to the outside world is far slower than that anyway!) but I'm not sure
which version they are. Wasn't there a 'C' board, too?
Some of my personal favorite cards were the so-called
NE2500 cards (not
NE2000). The chips were made by AMD and their design was a lot more
refined than the original NE2000. They weren't as well supported as the
generic NE2000 though.
Ahh, that brings back memories of messing around with supposedly-compatible
NE2000 clone boards back in the early 90s in order to run Doom :-) (fuzzy
memory says that Doom ran across IPX rather than TCP/IP)
cheers
Jules