[tulip] recommend Good, Cheap tulip adapter cards (November 2000)

[Stephen Gutknecht (vw)]

Hi,

I'm on the quest for a high-performing PCI network card under $25 per part.
I've posted on public newsgroups and read the archives of this mailing list
(and others).  My primary experience to date has been the Realtek 8139c
chipset... which is not a very good chipset architecture by many accounts
(the freebsd drivers slander it as the "worst PCI NIC design ever made" -
http://mlug.missouri.edu/list-archives/1999-10/msg00156.php3 ).

My intended application is LAN routers + bridges.  OpenBSD and Linux.

I found a thread on this mailing list from January 1999:
http://www.tux.org/hypermail/linux-tulip/1999-Jan/0021.html

The thread breaks into other threads... but there was lots of good
information on various adapter cards and their respective chipsets (and
flaws).

Any recommendations of one card over another given what is available today?
Is there another inexpensive chipset out there (even it outside tulip) that
is worth considering?

Thanks.

  Stephen Gutknecht
  Renton, Washington