I just bought a few D-Link 530TX cards for some machines here
that have problems with the tlp driver (otherwise, these days I
usually buy SohoWare Fast, a.k.a SAFA110A rev B4, cards, which
are $20 and have MX98715 parts on them).  At least, I thought
I bought DL530TX cards.

But they're not.  They're "DL530TX+" cards.  And now the chip
with a D-Link part number clumsily silkscreened on it is not
an OEM VIA Rhine (okay, requires a copy on transmit DMA), it's
an OEM RealTek 8139 (piece of crap, requires at least one copy
on *every* DMA).

Since the main factor influencing my purchasing decision WRT
network cards for workstastions is "not a realtek" I will be
taking these cards back.

I had a good source for SMC EtherPower II ("epic") cards at
$35 each (the SohoWare or D-Link cards are abour $20 and noname
RealTek cards are as cheap as $10) but SMC seems to have decided
not to make the EtherPower II any more.  A shame, because perusing
our various drivers leads me to believe it, "ex" (which has its
own problems), and "fxp" are the only ones with alignment
constraints sufficiently lax that copying packets is never
required.  So I'm still looking for a decent 100baseTX card
for servers that's cheap.

ISTR that not all tulips, nor all clones, require strict alignment
of packets, but the driver seems to be conservative about this.
Do I remember incorrectly, or should we perhaps build a list of
which variants can handle unaligned packets and which can't?

(incidentally, anyone know what the part on current BayNetworks
  FA-310TX cards is?  It has only a Bay part number, it seems)

-- 
Thor Lancelot Simon	                                      tls@rek.tjls.com
	"And where do all these highways go, now that we are free?"