[tulip] NetGear FA311 network card

[Jim Morris]

On Sun, 05 Nov 2000, Jay Crews wrote:

> I recently got a Netgear model FA311 card, and am trying to get
> it to work with Red Hat Linux 6.2, which I assume uses the tulip
> module.  The install diskette had the source (fa311.c and fa311.h)
> on it, which compiled fine, but it still doesn't see the card
> at boot time.

The Netgear FA311 and FA312 do not use a Tulip or Tulip-clone chip. Instead,
they are based on a National Semiconductor chip.  They do NOT work with the
Tulip driver.  I found this out myself when I bought one of
these cards a week or two ago at Staple's.   The Netgear supplied driver on the
diskette supplied with the FA311 is - get this - only for the 2.0.xx series of
kernels!  It hints at this in the source code comments, and from what I've
heard, it doesn't work with 2.2 or 2.4 kernels.

That said, you can go to the Linux ethernet driver site at www.scyld.com, and
download a "National Semiconductor" driver (natsemi.c I think) that will work
with this card.  The 2.4 prerelease kernels include a modified copy of the
natsemi.c driver as well.

My understanding is that the Netgear FA311/312 cards are the only ones out that
use this chipset.  When I found the card would not work at all with a kernel
supplied driver, I took it back and got my money back.

I had bought the Netgear because I needed a card quick, and didn't want another
problematic LinkSys LNE100TX. LinkSys just keeps changing their cards (in my
opinion) such that they break the Linux driver continually. I've got 3
different chipsets on cards here that all say "LNE100TX" on the card!

I would love to know of a GOOD Tulip-based card that would work out of the box
under Linux, without having to download new ethernet drivers every time I do an
install.  Kingston has ads running in the Linux Journal that claim THEIR cards
are compatible with the kernel supplied Tulip drivers. But noone locally
carries these cards, and I've had trouble finding them online too....

Hope this info helps you anyway....
 -- 
/-----------------------------\
| Jim Morris | Jim@Morris.net |
\-----------------------------/