On Sat, 29 Jan 2000 01:19:44 -0500  "Tony Hernandez" wrote:

> Do we have rtl8139 support in 1.4.2_ALPHA ? and will that
> kernel work with a 1.4.1 userland ? Or should I really just buy a PCI NE2000
> and move on ? It is just frustrating.

Hmm ... I asked for recommendations for 100baseTX cards yesterday.
Thanks to all who replied, and here is the summary.

rl18139 [from the list archives]

    Really low end card.  It's also cheap, so maybe it's a good
    deal.  There is a 'rl' driver in -current and also in 1.4.2_ALPHA.

    http://mail-index.netbsd.org/port-i386/1999/04/11/0005.html
    http://mail-index.netbsd.org/port-i386/2000/01/08/0008.html

SMC 9432TX `EtherPower II'

    Recommended by Jason Thorpe (he who obsessively writes drivers
    for network cards :-) and by someone who'd previously purchased
    them based on Jason's recommendation.

Netgear

    Recommended enthusiastically by Steve Paul, subject to them
    being old stock with Digital chips.  The new Netgear cards use
    a different chip and don't work with NetBSD.  (Hey, Jason, you
    missed one! :-)

Intel 10/100 (EtherExpress Pro?)

    Recommended by Jeff Northon who replaced a bunch of 3com cards
    with these.  (On the other hand, Steve Paul likes the 3com
    cards mostly and is unsure of the Intel ones! :-)

Jason Thorpe also liked Macronix based cards in -current but noted
that he'd not made the 'tlp' driver auto-sense with them yet.

I've had a previous recommendation for PCI NE2000s but I guess they
don't do DMA anymore than the ISA ones did, so they're perhaps
suited to light duty (like the realtek! :-).

For myself I went to my usual supplier and found:

- they didn't stock SMC
- the Netgear cards (AUD$50) were all the new type
- plenty of stock of Intel EtherExpress (AUD$125)
- there was a RealTek card on the pricelist (AUD$32)

Having discovered that the HP branded NIC in a loaner machine is
picked up by the 'le' driver I only needed one new card (the 486s
and hp300 can stay on coax -- they'll never notice :) and chose
the Intel one.

Regards,

Giles