new Netgear 310TX?

[Jon Lewis]

On Sun, 30 Aug 1998, Donald Becker wrote:

> > I just received a 10-pack of Netgear FA310TX (we were so happy with the
> > ones we got a few months ago, we ordered a couple of 10-packs this time).
> > I was kind of shocked to see no DEC chip.  FA310TX REV-D1 has a Netgear
> 
> I'm guessing that they are Lite-On "PNIC" chips, just like the new LinkSys
> boards.  The '169 has only an MII interface.

I think I remember that (definitely the Lite-On part) from either
/proc/pci or the tulip driver messages.  I was in a hurry at the time and
don't remember which it was.

> A curious thing about the PNIC: it doesn't seem to work in
> chained-descriptor mode.  I was ready to release the updated tulip driver,
> with better 21143 media support, when the PNIC board I was testing with
> failed after 16 packets.  It took me a long time to figure out what went
> wrong -- I had changed the driver to use chained descriptors in order to
> simplify the Wake-on-LAN resume code that I was experimenting with.

So my original question still stands.  We bought these mostly for setting
up a bunch of systems that will be at remote POPs.  Flakey ethernet
interfaces would be a major PITA in these systems.  Should they be as
trouble-free as the FA310TX based on the 21140, or is this a totally new
animal?  It kind of sucks that companies make signifigant changes to a
product and continue to sell it under the same model name. 

Another question....I'm putting extra cards in some of the systems,
planning ahead for ethernet segments that won't exist initially, but will
at some point in the future.  These cards (or is it the tulip driver) 
don't like not being plugged into something and the driver does lots of
printk's complaining about no link.  Is there a way to quiet this down?

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