Hello Jonathan!

Wow, talk about a quick response!

  JS> 3c509s, if you can find them reasonably priced. (i've
    > seen still some on retail for just over $100, a top-of
    > -the-line price from 1994 or so).

Now I'm confused (aren't I always? =o) Someone recently told
me that 3Com cards were great for DOS and MS-Windows because
they wrote good drivers for them, but were technically not
all they were cracked up to be - he didn't recommend them
for BSD.

I've used 3c509 NICs before, and I recall being told that
the 3C509b was better than the 3C509a because the former
would only interrupt when it received a packet meant
specifically for it, rather than for every packet received
which the latter apparently did.  Can you confirm this?

For the record I can pick up the Realtek ISA cards locally
for US$ 20.

  JS> If you go shopping for ISA cards, you're most likely
    > to find some variety of ne-2000 clone or derivative.
    > Many of these have some proprietary flavour of media
    > control -- e.g., full-duplex, or switching between
    > 10base2 and 10baseT).

On some of the earlier combo cards it was pretty simple to
switch between 10 Base-2 and 10 Base-T, you just set a
jumper. I /think/ with the Realtek cards that it was done in
the flash configuration program where you set base address,
IRQ etc.  Is full-duplex usually a good thing on 10 Base-T?

  JS> It's worse with PCMCIA, where support for 100Mbit
    > modes or PHY i/o lines is also proprietary.

I don't think I'd want to attempt 100MB/s on a PC-Card
unless I was using Cardbus (32-bit PCMCIA).  I may have
Cardbus, but I'm setting up 10 Base-T anyway.

  JS> At least we have support for the Realtek cards ;)

Yep, and that's something I'm greatful for!  =o)

Regards,
  -
Andy.

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