On Dec 16, 2004, at 11:18 PM, Donald Lee wrote:

>> On Dec 16, 2004, at 6:34 AM, Cameron Kaiser wrote:
>>
>>>> My PowerMac 7300 seems to be dropping quite a few packets (about 
>>>> 40%)
>>>> with NetBSD 2.0 stable (generic).  I searched the list archives and
>>>> read quite a few similar inquiries, and a lot of them had 7300s as
>>>> well.  I couldn't really find a solution, though.  Is there one?
>>>> I had 1.6.2 installed a little while ago and networking was 
>>>> completely
>>>> unusable, dropping almost everything.  NetBSD 2.0 seems to have 
>>>> made a
>>>> significant improvement (ftp transfers over the LAN download at 
>>>> about
>>>> 950kbps, whereas before I was lucky to even get a connection).  I've
>>>> never had to deal with any kernel dropping packets, so I'm just
>>>> wondering what can be done about it.
>>>
>>> Is this with the original 604 installed? I run 1.6.2 on my 7300 with 
>>> a Sonnet
>>> G3/500, and I haven't had any problems with dropped packets through 
>>> the
>>> motherboard Ethernet or the second rtk-based PCI Ethernet.
>>
>> Yes, it has the original processor.  I do have a PowerLogix G4/500 
>> card
>> that I've used in it before when Mac OS was on the machine.  I'll put
>> that back in and see if things are better.
>>
>> Thanks,
>> chaz
>
> Careful....
>
> Some of these older outrigger machines had problems with the onboard
> ethernet HW failling like this.  This is well documented in some of the
> 7200 models, but I've seen it on my own machines where it fails by 
> simply
> getting flaky.  My fix was to use a pci ethernet card.
>
> My experience was with Mac OS 8/9, so NetBSD drivers are _not_ the
> culprit. ;->

Yeah, I'm confident the drivers are fine.  Flaky hardware is what I
initially guessed, and the processor upgrade didn't help.  Although I do
think there was something wrong with 1.6.2 because I could hardly make a
connection.  But NetBSD 2.0 works at least as good as Mac OS did for
networking.

So now my question is what (cheap) PCI NICs are available/recommended?

Thanks,
chaz