a question

[Torbjorn Lindgren]

On Wed, 11 Nov 1998, Neil Zanella wrote:
> team for the wonderful work on the 3c59x.c driver.
> Next, I would like to ask a question, if appropriate to this newsgroup:
> 
> I am thinking of purchasing the following card:
> 3Com Fast Etherlink XL- 3c905B-TX 
[...]
> - kernel 2.0.35 comes with v0.99E of the driver and v0.99G is the latest
>   and probably best. Partial support seems to be included in 3c59x.c
>   for this card.

0.99E is still the latest OFFICIAL version AFAIK, 0.99G is available as
"test" driver. The 0.99F test driver seemed to broken on the machines I've
seen, and there have been similar reports for the 0.99G driver too, so I
would definitely be a bit wary of it!

0.99E does work with all of OUR 3c905B's, as long as we obey the few
well-known limitations with that combination:

* You have to tell it the correct line-speed, and I haven't tried full
  duplex yet.
* Win95B & Win98 nukes the card when shutting down, requiring either a
  tour through the card configuration utility to revive it. Or physically
  unplugging the machine to reset the card (ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff station
  address is a sign that you have hit this).

The 0.99F test versions appears to fix these, but that isn't much of a
help since the card doesn't actually WORK (no traffic goes through it)
with that driver...


> - There are different versions of the 3c905B, namely:
> Boomerang, Vortex, and Cyclone
> and these names do not appear on the box as far as I could tell: one has 
> to look at the card inside the box. As I haven't purchased one yet I 
> cannot tell which one the card I intend to purchase uses yet.

No, all 3c905*B*'s have Cyclone chipsets (that's why they ARE 3c90xB).
3c90x cards uses Boomerang, while the 3c59x uses Vortex chipsets.

It's supposedly internal 3com working names for the chipsets used inside
the cards... I don't think it appears on ANYTHING except the programming
information (I certainly haven't seen it anywhere, and that was the
explaination I've heard of the name).


> - None of the cards supports 100Mbps yet.
> - Some of the cards work at 10Mbps

Huh? All of them works at both 100 AND 10 Mbps, if the card supports it!
(3c595/3c905/3c905B) As said earlier I can't get autosensing to work with
the *B* cards (Cyclone) with the older drivers, it always seem to select
10 Mbit. But if tell them to use 100Mbit it works fine in half-duplex. I
have no idea whether full duplex works, I haven't tried that on B cards.

Both 3c59x and regular 3c90x cards handle this fine against all equipment
I've seen. This includes both 10 and 100 Mbit in both half-duplex and
full-duplex...


> So, my question is:
> Which of Boomerang, Vortex, and Cyclone appear to work with either the
> 0.99E or 0.99G or some other driver without running into problems?

* 3c59x:  Oldest Etherlink IIIXL cards, now only available in EISA AFAIK..
  Significantly more overhead than the newer cards, and not available any
  longer...
* 3c90x:  The best IMNSHO, except they aren't available any longer :-)
  Go for it *IF* you can find one!
* 3c90xB: The new series of card, once the driver situation stabilizes
  they will probably be equvivalent to the 3c90x cards... Can be made to
  work with a few restrictions.

In practice I suspect that there are no choice now, only the 3c90xB cards
appears to be are available (for PCI).

The relevant part of the /etc/conf.modules I use is (options=4 means
100Mbit half-duplex):

alias eth0 3c59x
options 3c59x options=4