A call for Wisecom 21140 Tulip cards (was Re: Cheap, good tulips...)

[Al Youngwerth]

I've been following this thread from a distance until now. My company has
bought a lot (probably close to 10,000) of the 10Mbit ethernet cards from
Wisecom in the past (excellent quality by the way for an ne2000 clone).
We've never bought their 10/100 cards because they've always pushed us
towards their Realtek based card saying they wouldn't guarantee the life of
the 21140 based cards.

I'm now thoroughly sick of the PNIC based cards (I find their stability to
be "fragile", that's a whole 'nother story, see previous post) so I'm
looking for an alternative.

I gave our sales rep, Vick at Wisecom a call and explained our situation
and the Linux community's situation on this matter. Gave him the "you could
be a big fish in a small pond" pitch with a good, stable supply of 21140s
(I also told him he was going to loose our 10Mbit business as we moved over
to 100% 10/100 cards, which is reality).

I asked him if it was OK to post his e-mail address here so he could get
more feedback to convince them to keep the product. So assuming they can
still get the chips (he was pretty sure they could) and he gets enough
positive feedback from the list, I think there's a good chance they'll
continue to build the 21140 cards.

Disclaimer: I do not work for Wisecom, never have, don't own their stock,
etc. I do stand to benefit here other than having a good supply of ethernet
cards. My company does not resell Wisecom cards alone either.

Vick's email address is vick@wisecominc.com. I'll give Vick a call next
week and see what he has to say.

Thanks,

Al Youngwerth
alberty@apexxtech.com