Subject: Re: getting a CATS to use el cheapo ne0 & sb0
To: None <mark@causality.com>
From: Todd Whitesel <toddpw@best.com>
List: port-arm32
Date: 08/31/1998 02:11:34
> A while ago I found $9 21142 10/100baseT PCI cards lurking there. (I
> really should try and work out why the NetBSD de driver does not like it
> ;-)

Please do! I much prefer the "Tulip" cards although their PHY chips seem to
run hot, or at least all the cards I tried out last year did...

> Hmm what chip do the cards use ? what vendor and product ID's does the
> firmware report for the card. The current firmware recognises the
> following chips
> 
> REALTEK RT8029
> WINBOND W89C940F
> VIATECH VT86C926

The i386 believes this board to be a Realtek 8029.

However!! All is not well. I tried some real tests with the board today, and
it appears to suck with the netbsd-1.3.2 ne2000 driver. Get this:

Telnet performance is spasmodic. There are lots of pregnant pauses as if some
very slow timer is flushing whatever outstanding data is "in flight" in the
connection. Ping shows that each packet appears to take exactly 1 second
longer than it should, but it's not clear whether the delay is during
transmit, receive, or both.

So I yanked the PCI-NE2000 card and put in a $10 ISAPnP-NE2000 card that I
bought a month ago. It works fine, and I am using it to do an initial sup of
-current which has been running for hours with no apparent problems. Strange.

However, the real goal here is to get the PCI-NE2000 working so I can use it
on the CATS system. Bootstrapping is sooo much fun.

Todd Whitesel
toddpw @ best.com