[tulip] [Newbie] Multiple DLINK DFE570TX info

[Donald Becker]

On Sat, 23 Sep 2000 SYLVAIN.COUTANT@illicom.com wrote:

> I'm new to this mailing and subscribed because I saw some informations about
> the DFE570TX card in some previous posts.

> - Stability of the card ? Do the tulip drivers work fine and stable with it ?

The DFE570 should work fine.

> - 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 ?

It's usually not a poblem: 486 machines usually have problems with bus
master bursts, but most P5 systems are OK with most PCI v2.0 boards.

> 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) ?

The ports will usually end up on the same IRQ.  Older BIOSes are usually
buggy and set the IRQs registers to read different IRQs, even thought all
interrupts come in on the first interface IRQ.

The only way the IRQs can be spread is if all the INTA..INTD lines are used,
and the motherboard supports using all.  Most motherboards only connect INTA
and perhaps INTB.

Donald Becker				becker@scyld.com
Scyld Computing Corporation		http://www.scyld.com
410 Severn Ave. Suite 210		Beowulf-II Cluster Distribution
Annapolis MD 21403