Date: Mon, 9 Aug 1999 11:56:32 +0300 From: Vallo Kallaste <vallo@matti.ee> To: Glenn Johnson <gjohnson@nola.srrc.usda.gov> Cc: Christian Kratzer <ck@toplink.net>, freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Please comments about SMC 9432TX [Was: Re: 100mbit full-duplex capable card] Message-ID: <19990809115631.A41160@myhakas.matti.ee> In-Reply-To: <19990808222335.A7221@gforce.johnson.home>; from Glenn Johnson on Sun, Aug 08, 1999 at 10:23:35PM -0500 References: <01a901bee060$1472c260$2e5685c7@srrc.usda.gov> <Pine.LNX.4.10.9908070900010.2915-100000@hirvi.toplink.net> <19990808222335.A7221@gforce.johnson.home>
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On Sun, Aug 08, 1999 at 10:23:35PM -0500, Glenn Johnson <gjohnson@nola.srrc.usda.gov> wrote: > > could you please be more specific about that. We are quite happy with > > the SMC 9432TX "EtherPower II" type of cards. Not to be confused with > > what they sell as EtherEZ. > > > > EtherEZ != EtherPower > > > > I most certainly am not confusing the EtherEZ with the EtherPower II. I > can't give you numbers because I no longer have these cards installed, > but here is what I experienced. I bought two of these cards (EtherPower > II) because they were cheap and I heard they were good. I installed > them on two of my machines connected on a Fast Ethernet switch. On one > machine the network link would go down in about five minutes regardless > of load. On the other machine, the network link would be ok unless I put > it under a load, say FTP a 2Mb file. The link would freeze up. The only > way to reset it was to do a 'ifconfig tx0 down' followed by a 'ifconfig > tx0 up'. I replaced one of these cards with an Intel EtherExpress Pro > and the other card with a 3Com 3C905B. I have had zero trouble with > those. > > I even put the SMC card in a Windows machine, thinking that the Windows > driver would be better. Well, I still had occasional network link > freezes but the biggest problem was that performance even under Windows > was slow. I replaced the SMC card in the Windows computer as well and > saw a big improvement in network speed. > > So my question to you is, are you running your SMC cards at > full-duplex? It could be that they work fine at half-duplex. Also, > perhaps you have a newer revision of the card. I remember there was some > discussion of a hardware bug that required a work-around in the driver > but maybe that was fixed in a later revision. In any event, I am glad > that you are happy with your SMC EtherPower II cards. I was not happy > with mine and was just responding to the question asked about Fast > Ethernet full-duplex cards. Thanks for your all replies. I haven't got reply from Jason R. Thorpe yet unfortunately. I'm going to get one card and play with it. I'm almost sure there were problems with tx driver some time ago, hope these are fixed now. -- Vallo Kallaste vallo@matti.ee To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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