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Date:      Wed, 30 Aug 2000 19:42:44 -0400
From:      "Andrew C. Hornback" <hornback@wireco.net>
To:        "'John Turner'" <john@drexeltech.com>
Cc:        <freebsd-questions@freebsd.org>
Subject:   RE: NIC cards
Message-ID:  <002301c012db$ff4f0380$d4776bce@challenger>
In-Reply-To: <4.3.2.7.0.20000830141635.00b1ed40@mail.johnturner.com>

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> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG
> [mailto:owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG]On Behalf Of John Turner
> Sent: Wednesday, August 30, 2000 2:20 PM
> To: BWS - Offwhite; pstapley
> Cc: Conover, Justin; freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG
> Subject: Re: NIC cards
>
> If money is no object, I like Intel cards (they also work with BeOS
> nicely).  The best price/performance ratio I've ever seen is
> with SMC.  I
> get mine at the local retail store (CompUSA) for $14US and
> they come with a
> Cat5 patch cable (10/100 autosense, too).  They work like a
> charm in all of
> my FreeBSD boxes, though I'm not online with any of them
> right now, so I
> can't recall the exact device they use.

	Finally... someone else that agrees with me about SMC.  *sends massive
amounts of cybercash to Mr. Turner*

	But seriously... Having done the research before I ever got into doing
Ethernet, I found out that SMC offers the lowest processor overhead,
lifetime tech support, and probably the most solid network card out there.

	Someone else mentioned how 3Coms were flaky.  I've worked where they had
3Com add-in cards in use before, and it seemed like machines would do "very
interesting things" (tm) on the network... It seems like the 3Com hardware
that gets built onto the motherboards (i.e. Dell, etc.) is superior to the
hardware that gets used on the add-in cards.

	Intels are nice cards, no doubt.  And for the prices that they sell at,
they should be!

	If it's going in my machine, it's going to be SMC.

> Netgear is also a great choice, for hubs and switches as well as NICs.

	Hmm... I've got a friend that was ga-ga over Netgear... until I had him try
some of my SMC equipment.  Soon after, he converted.

	But, just like how someone else said, this is basically a good way to begin
a holy war around these parts, *grin*

	FWIW, FreeBSD is the only Unix OS that I've tried that will successfully
recognize my SMC cards automatically (8216C and 9432TX).  Solaris 7 doesn't.
RedHat and Slackware don't.  Maybe it's a coincidence, maybe it's a sign.
Do the math.

--- Andy



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