[tulip] [Newbie] Multiple DLINK DFE570TX info

[Tim Dixon]

> - Stability of the card ? Do the tulip drivers work fine and stable with
it ?
> - Old motherboard support. These boxes will not handle big amount of data,
> ethernet ports will be connected to 64, 128 and 256Kbps connections
(Internet
> lines, RNIS lines, etc.). I am currently using a P133/32Mo and 3 3C509C
> cards. It works well but these computers are old and their PCI bus is
surrely
> not compliant with the latest technologies (ACPI, APIC, etc.) Could this
be a
> problem ?
>
> By the way, a little bit of education about what happens in this case ?
Will
> the 4 ports on the same board be assigned the same IRQ ? On newer
> motherboard, I'll say no. They should be assigned virtual IRQs (16, 17,
18,
> etc.). Am I wrong ? And on older boards (as mine) ?

We run a significant number of machines of various vintages with up to 5
cards in each. We've had no problems with the (latest) drivers - the
machines runs for months and months -  but some problems with motherboards
(relatively recent ones).

You're effectively putting 4 separate PCI devices into the box, so they'll
get an IRQ each and that's where we've had the most problems - there aren't
enough IRQs for each port to have its own and some motherboards seem to have
broken shared-IRQ handling. Whether this is a problem for you will depend on
the motherboard, the number of cards and what other IRQs are in use.


Tim Dixon
----
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