Who now

[Robert G. Brown]

On Thu, 5 Nov 1998, Robert G. Brown wrote:

> I don't know who makes it, but I got two tulip cards from Intrex that
> worked flawlessly from the second I got them (with 0.89-something).
> When I get home I'll look for the box and see if I can give you a
> manufacturer but they are pretty generic...

Yup, if there was ever a generic ethernet card, these are it.  The
support floppy says "10/100 Mbps PCI Ethernet Adapter" and that's it.
The installation guide is a multifold sheet without so much as a
corporate logo on it.  It could be that the company is called "CE", but
I cannot be sure.

I imagine that if I shut down and yanked the cards I could find some
sort of logo, but I don't think it would help much.  I verified that
they were tulips in the store by just looking at the control chip --
genuine Digital DS21140.  If only the world made more of these, we'd all
be better off -- I think Don gets pretty tired of dealing with all the
little mindless hacks "value added" to a card and chipset already
capable of basically the theoretical maximum in performance that are
just enough to keep a truly generic driver from running.

Anyway, there are some VERY cheap, VERY generic tulip NIC's out there,
if you look around.

   rgb

Robert G. Brown	                       http://www.phy.duke.edu/~rgb/
Duke University Dept. of Physics, Box 90305
Durham, N.C. 27708-0305
Phone: 1-919-660-2567  Fax: 919-660-2525     email:rgb@phy.duke.edu