Date: Tue, 06 May 1997 18:27:48 -0700 From: David Greenman <dg@root.com> To: "Russell L. Carter" <rcarter@consys.com> Cc: Jaye Mathisen <mrcpu@cdsnet.net>, dennis <dennis@etinc.com>, Tim Tsai <tim@futuresouth.com>, hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: if_de.c ???? Message-ID: <199705070127.SAA18884@implode.root.com> In-Reply-To: Your message of "Tue, 06 May 1997 15:12:30 PDT." <199705062212.PAA19364@conceptual.com>
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>It *is* a (mostly?) volunteer effort, and it appears from here in >the cheap seats that Matt got irritated at something or another, and no >longer desires to keep de current, for whatever reason. The thing >I don't understand is why the cold shoulder given to the 211xxx >cards by Jordan and DG, among others. So what if the cpu utilization >is higher? These nics are cheap, and not sole source, IMHO a >real *good* thing. The if_de driver is a #ifdef mess. It tries to support multiple operating systems that are diverging quickly every day. Simply put, I can't personally support it. This arrangement was fine while the author was willing to support it, but he pulled support for FreeBSD and announced his intentions of only supporting NetBSD. At that point the code started to grow some mold. One of the problems with having such a popular NIC, coupled with little architectural direction from the manufacturer, is that you get a variant- a-week syndrome (different serial EEPROMs, different format for the data in the EEPROM, etc) - and no matter what you do, it's not possible to deal with this in a clean way. So how can I or anyone else who is knowledgeable about the 'de' cards recommend them? Sure, the old ones work fine - but this means nothing when you go out and buy a new one. I'm recommending the Intel Pro/100B because I wrote the code for it. I'm using the card in all of my machines and in wcarchive because I can support it. While I'm no great fan of Intel NPD (network products division), the PCI product they have produced does work quite well under FreeBSD. It's not a proprietary chip - anyone can make a card based on it; it's just that noone has yet done so. If you really hate Intel and just can't bare the thought of your bits going through a NIC that they make, then I suggest finding an old DEC NIC based card and go with that. Finally, it's annoying to me and others when people whine about things like this. If people want to be useful and tell us which cards aren't working, that's fine and we encourage this, but Jaye's rant pokes at a raw nerve and is not helpful. -DG David Greenman Core-team/Principal Architect, The FreeBSD Project
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