Greetings and Prognostications!

>> >You will see Sun, ICL and Fujitsu parts lurking.
>> >It ought to be easy to make any of them work.
>> >ICL certainly made cards that are switchable AUI/10base2, switchable
>> >AUI/TP and TP only.
>> 
>> But, no AUI/coax/rj45 cards?  (makes life easy for folks like
>> me who can't make up our minds! :>)
>
>Not enough room on the faceplate.....


They, of course, could use a different style connector
(as they already have with the "MII" on the LX/classic, etc.)
Looks like there is easily room for an RJ45 and MII...
It's not like they are averse to this sort of bastardization
of connectors!!  :> (audio, serial ports, ethernet, etc.  :>)
 
>> Ouch!  But can you configure a particular hardware address
>> into the controller thru software?  I.e. tell the NIChip
>> to ignore the serial eprom interface...?
>
>I don't know of a network adapter where the driver doesn't have to read
>the address prom and then write the value into the relevant register(s)
>of the ethernet controller.

Some NIChips load the EEPROM automatically.  Note that there
is nothing that *forces* you to store the address on the card
(though in practical terms this is the case for COTS systems)

>On some cards getting teh MAC address is the hardest part of the driver!


--don