Subject: Re: ae problems w/Farallon EtherMac
To: Anders Magnusson <ragge@ludd.luth.se>
From: Boris Gjenero <bgjenero@undergrad.math.uwaterloo.ca>
List: port-mac68k
Date: 01/14/1998 12:19:48
Anders Magnusson wrote:
> 
> > qe0: ring overrun, resync'd by skipping 13
> > qe0: ring overrun, resync'd by skipping 9
> >
> Those messages only shows up on DEQNA cards. I have never gotten it on
> DELQA myself but I have heard about other people that have got it.
> I think that it is a hardware bug that gives these, or something.
> The DEQNA card is very slow and have a bad reputation, and IIRC
> DEC stopped supporting those devices a long time ago and only
> supported DELQA.
> 
> -- Ragge

You know... it's interesting.  With all the bad stuff I've heard and
read about the DEQNA I could conclude that they are extremely flaky and
very bad for your network.  I've actually read how a DEQNA can take a
whole network down by replying to every packet.  When power cycled it
goes back to being its old friendly (??) self.

However, in my experience the DEQNA is actually very nice.  I haven't
had any problems with mine.  They just sit in a QBus slot and let the
VAX talk to the network.  They perform fairly well under heavy loads.  
With an rcp from a much faster machine and considerable NFS activity the
telnet sessions aren't adversely affected.  Even rcp performance is
fairly fast.  I've certainly seen more bad thins with the Lance ethernet
on the VAXstation 2000 and Intel ethernet on my Sun 4/260.  Heck, even
PC NE2000 clones are more annoying.

-- 
|  Boris Gjenero <bgjenero@undergrad.math.uwaterloo.ca>              |
|  Home page:  http://www.undergrad.math.uwaterloo.ca/~bgjenero/     |
|  "Luke, you're going to find that many of the truths we cling to   |
|  depend greatly on our own point of view." - Obi-Wan Kenobi, ROTJ  |