From owner-freebsd-hardware Fri Jul 7 16:11:50 2000 Delivered-To: freebsd-hardware@freebsd.org Received: from pike.osd.bsdi.com (pike.osd.bsdi.com [204.216.28.222]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 852F037BF78 for ; Fri, 7 Jul 2000 16:11:46 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from jhb@foo.osd.bsdi.com) Received: from foo.osd.bsdi.com (root@foo.osd.bsdi.com [204.216.28.137]) by pike.osd.bsdi.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id QAA62939; Fri, 7 Jul 2000 16:11:31 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from jhb@foo.osd.bsdi.com) Received: (from jhb@localhost) by foo.osd.bsdi.com (8.9.3/8.9.3) id QAA02056; Fri, 7 Jul 2000 16:11:11 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from jhb) Message-ID: X-Mailer: XFMail 1.4.0 on FreeBSD X-Priority: 3 (Normal) Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit MIME-Version: 1.0 In-Reply-To: Date: Fri, 07 Jul 2000 16:11:11 -0700 (PDT) Organization: BSD, Inc. From: John Baldwin To: Chris Dillon Subject: Re: New system for FreeBSD -- pls advise Cc: jfb@visi.com, freebsd-hardware@FreeBSD.ORG Sender: owner-freebsd-hardware@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.org On 07-Jul-00 Chris Dillon wrote: > On Fri, 7 Jul 2000, John Baldwin wrote: > >> >> On 06-Jul-00 Chris Dillon wrote: >> > On Thu, 6 Jul 2000 jfb@visi.com wrote: >> > >> >> Hello, all, >> >> >> >> I'm looking at getting a brand new box at home, and want to make sure >> >> that I don't end up with components that will preclude me from using >> >> my OS of choice. >> >> >> >> Currently, my hardware selections are as follows: >> >> >> >> 3Com 3c905b ethernet >> > >> > One word: yuck. Get an Intel EtherExpress PRO 10/100B. >> >> Why yuck? Both of these ethernet cards work quite well. > > I've just had very bad experiences with the cards in the Windows > arena. 3COM also thinks they should charge more money for products > that aren't even close to par with competitors, yet consumers seem > very ignorant of this and I like to point it out. Try comparing the > price/performance/features of a 3COM SuperStack II 3300, an HP > ProCurve 4000M or 2424M, and a Cisco Catalyst 2924M-XL. The 3COM > SuperStack II costs more than either of those other switches, yet > doesn't even come close to the performance/features of the other two. > As for the NICs, everywhere I look the 3COM NIC costs more than the > Intel, yet the Intel NIC has added advantatges such as WOL, an > integrated boot ROM, and much slimmer Windows drivers that work for > the whole NIC family. In regards to these two network cards (fxp and xl), both perform equally well under FreeBSD at least, so perhaps 3com's driver is just more brain-damaged under Windows, which could be a problem. However, other products are unrelated in this. Also, both the Intel Etherexpress Management adapter and the 3c905c ship with a PXE ROM BIOS for booting, however, the ROM on the Intel adapters is buggy and must be flashed to a newer version before it will work properly. 3Com's BIOS works out of the box. Also, if he is buying a package deal, it may not save him money to switch network cards. Finally, that card will run happily on several platforms. -- John Baldwin -- http://www.FreeBSD.org/~jhb/ PGP Key: http://www.cslab.vt.edu/~jobaldwi/pgpkey.asc "Power Users Use the Power to Serve!" - http://www.FreeBSD.org/ To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hardware" in the body of the message