Asante? was Re: Cheap, good tulips...

[Duffey, Harry (Houston)]

I wasn't trying to start an argument.  You are right in the fact that
the hardware vendors need to write the drivers to support the cards and
stop making oddball changes.  When that happens life will be much easier
with Linux.  I think the hardware vendors will start writing the
drivers, especially since some of the big guns are supporting Linux
(i.e. Intel, Oracle).

For now though, I'd rather spend more time with other fun stuff than
trying to get a $20 card working.  I'll continue to use the cards that
work flawlessy everytime until the hardware vendors get with the
program.  The price isn't even an issue right now anyway.

p.s.  I'll consider this thread closed.  I don't want to waste anymore
bandwidth discussing network cards. I've had enough of them.  I'm on to
bigger and better things like a Beowolf system.

Later,

Harry

> -----Original Message-----
> From:	Kurt Seifried [SMTP:seifried@seifried.org]
> Sent:	Monday, January 11, 1999 12:09 PM
> To:	Duffey, Harry (Houston); geofft@waikato.ac.nz; Anthony M. Bray
> Cc:	linux-tulip@cesdis1.gsfc.nasa.gov
> Subject:	Re: Asante? was Re: Cheap, good tulips...
> 
> >For that price you can buy Intel Ether Express Pro 10/100 nics that
> work
> >everytime.
> >http://www.pricewatch.com
> >
> >To all who are using Tulip based cards.  We have tried different
> cards
> >with all of Becker's drivers.  You can eventually get them to work
> buy
> >finding the right combination of card and driver.  Plan on spending
> some
> >time doing this.  I do understand the tulip based cards are cheaper.
> >
> >In my opinion, we have switched to Intel cards because they work
> >everytime with no special tweaking.  As far as performance, we are
> >running at wire speed (100Mbps) on every benchmark test performed.
> If
> >Linux wants to make it in this Windows dominant world, users are
> going
> >to have to be able to plug in an ethernet card and not spend hours
> >trying to get it to work (By the way, I'm tired of Windows ruling
> this
> >world.  I'm ready for a "real" operating system like Linux to take
> >over).  The Intel cards have done that for us.  I will continue to
> use
> >Intel cards both at work and home until I find a cheaper card that
> you
> >can plug in and work right from the start.  My time is very valuable.
> >The time I spent trying to get the Tulip based cards to work properly
> >(with our switch), I could have bought several Intel cards.
> 
> Yeah but there are GOOD tulip cards like the Acer ALN-310 that as far
> as
> I know have never caused anyone any grief (personally I have used them
> 
> under NT 4.0/5.0, SCO OpenServer, Solaris, Linux (RedHat 4.2 up), 
> Windows 95/98, etc. You buy cheap, you get cruft.
> 
> As for users being able to "users are going to have to be able to plug
> in 
> an ethernet card and not spend hours trying to get it to work" this is
> a
> pipe dream. Between IRQ comflicts and s*itty drivers that ship with
> low
> end cards I have generally found making cards work in linux no more
> trouble then in Windows.
> 
> >That is something all of you should think about.
> 
> No. This is something hardware manufacturers should think about. Linux
> 
> cannot exactly be blammed if hardware vendors put out hardware and no
> drivers for Linux, remember these products are being supported by
> people like Mr. Becker. At the very least hardware vendors should stop
> making oddball changes to their products (like what gives with the
> 905b?).
> 
> >p.s.  I've called several Linux hardware vendors and low and behold
> they
> >use Intel exclusively on high-end Linux servers and workstations.
> >
> >Harry
> 
> -seifried