Date: Fri, 30 Jan 1998 18:19:25 From: "M. Monninger" <markem@primenet.com> To: questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Ethernet Cards Message-ID: <3.0.5.32.19980130181925.00981ae0@pop.primenet.com> In-Reply-To: <Pine.BSF.3.96.980130164656.2815F-100000@gdi.uoregon.edu> References: <Pine.BSF.3.96.980130005055.314A-100000@zippy.dyn.ml.org>
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At 04:47 PM 1/30/98 -0800, Doug White wrote: >On Fri, 30 Jan 1998, Alex wrote: > >> Do they need a bus master slot, or can I save those for my VGA and SCSI >> cards? And how much are the above mentioned cards (I already have a 3c509 >> and NE2k)? > >I think they are busmastering, yes, but modern hardware doesn't seem to >have issues with it. I dont' think my old P90 (which you had to manually >assign IRQs to the PCI slots) had any problems either. Hmmm...this sounds relevant to a problem I'm having with a PCI card. It's a 3Com 3c900. It works just fine under FreeBSD using the vx driver but when I boot Windoze NT the card won't work. I've tried 3 different drivers for it, all from 3Com. NT seems to find it but it just doesn't talk out on the wire. The NT diagnostics all run OK but the DOS diagnostics tell me they can't find the card and that there are no bus master slots. There is no way to set bus mastering in my bios (AMI). Very wierd. The other NIC I have in the machine is a cheapo NE2000 clone, also PCI. It works fine under FBSD and NT. An HP PCI card I tried also worked fine under NT but of course isn't supported under FBSD. I know...the obvious soultion is to forget NT and stick with FBSD but I really can't do that. I think I'm gonna go to Fry's this weekend and get another El-Cheapo NE2000. Anyone need a slightly used 3c900? I really don't understand much about this bus-mastering stuff. Anyone have any pointers to some info? Anyway, I'll also vouch for PCI being a lot faster than ISA. Loading an xterm (about a 4 MB burst of data) takes about half as long using the PCI than with an ISA card. Mark
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