7 Dec
2006
7 Dec
'06
4:35 p.m.
On Fri, 8 Dec 2006, Ethan Dicks wrote:
On 12/8/06, Jules Richardson <julesrichardsonuk at
yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
AFAIK, the only 100mb ISA card 3Com released was the 3C515. Its an odd
little card when compared to the other cards 3Com released. The driver
really doesn't share much in common with the others either. They never
really caught on, mainly due to how common the PCI bus became and because
of the card's high cost. That said, they do still turn up in the surplus
market from time to time, but they aren't nearly as well supported as the
Etherlink III or Etherlink XL series. I can't say I'd recommend them for
anything mission critical, but they could be good to play with. I think I
gave away the only two I had when I gave away the programming manual I had
for them, though I should probably find some more to work with under *BSD.
3Com is *very* good about providing programming manuals if you ask nicely
too :)
-Toth
I can live with 10Mbps speeds if required (would
DOS drivers even drive
a card at anything more anyway?)
Strictly speaking, DOS is not limiting your signalling speed, but the
ISA bus could be. There was one, only one, 100Mbps ISA card I ever ran
across (by 3Com, but I can't remember the model number) - it had a PCI
Ethernet chip and ISA<->PCI bridge chip, giving it, essentially, an
onboard PCI bus. I considered supporting it with the GG2 Bus+, but I
couldn't find one at the time for less than a couple hundred bucks and
figured my customers wouldn't be able to, either.