I'm trying to choose an ethernet card for a new system that is to run
netbsd and am finding the choice difficult---perhaps someone can offer some
useful information or advice.  The system will be pentium based (PCI & ISA)
with 32 MB of memory, and it will be networked with a Sun Sparc 1.  Good NFS
performance and as small as possible extra cpu load are a high priority.
I've looked at installation and hardware compatibility docs for netbsd,
freebsd, linux, nextstep, and solaris, and have glanced at some of the
driver sources for netbsd, but no clear choice emerges.

  Next did some benchmarks on the 3com 3c509, SMC Elite16, and Intel
EtherExpress that showed the performance of the first two to be considerably
poorer (under nextstep) than the latter.  This makes the 3c507, perhaps,
seem attractive (because it uses the intel 82586 chip, like the EtherExpress,
which netbsd does not currently support), but I haven't found any information
on performance of the 507 (nor have I seen it advertized), and I know nothing
else about it besides the ethernet chip it uses.

  The sparc uses an AMD Lance chip, so one might think that a card based on
that (e.g., an NE2100 clone) would provide comparable performance to the Sun.
But, I'm concerned about whether an ISA DMA busmastering card will work
with >16MB.  Anybody know for sure?  The le driver code contains:
         * XXX - hopefully have better way to get dma'able memory later,
         * this code assumes that the physical memory address returned
                     ^^^^^^^
         * from malloc will be below 16Mb. The Lance's address registers
         * are only 24 bits wide!
If it will work, are there any restrictions or performance hits associated
with using it in a system with >16MB memory that I should keep in mind?
Perhaps a better choice would be to use an AMD PCnet-PCI based card (e.g.,
one by Boca), but I've seen a posting on this list that says the current
Lance driver does not work with the Boca card.  Does anybody have any idea
whether it would be difficult to modify the le driver to make it work?

  So, does anybody have any additional bits of information that would be
useful?  Any pointers to additional information?  Any specific recommendations?

  Any and all help will be appreciated--thanks.

--Jim Bernard
  jbernard@iola.mines.colorado.edu