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To: Julian Elischer <julian@whistle.com>
Cc: Gennadi Makhmetov <gena@ph-elec.phys.msu.su>, freebsd-hardware@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject: Re: lnc device
References: <XFMail.970701211809.gena@ph-elec.phys.msu.su> <33B94DE9.59E2B600@whistle.com>
From: Paul Richards <p.richards@elsevier.co.uk>
Date: 02 Jul 1997 16:02:30 +0100
In-Reply-To: Julian Elischer's message of Tue, 01 Jul 1997 11:35:21 -0700
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Julian Elischer <julian@whistle.com> writes:

> > on ISA machine. I expect I would get the best performance
> > using bus mastering network cards. As I have found out, FreeBSD
> > supports some such cards using the lnc driver.
> > But in FAQ this driver is marked "known to have problems". In

That's an out of date comment referring to PCI probing. The lnc driver
didn't used to detect PCI cards.

The comments by Julian about using two of these cards on an ISA bus
still apply though. The problem with bus mastering above 16Mb usually
doesn't have any relevance since the driver mallocs its
transmit/receive buffers  very soon after boot and I've never seen a
case of it not getting memory below 16Mb (it fails to attach if it
does).

I wouldn't recommend them for what you want to do though, two
bus-mastering ethernet cards on an ISA bus never worked very
well. They always trod on each other's toes.

-- 
  Dr Paul Richards. [p.richards@elsevier.co.uk]
  Originative Solutions Ltd.  [paul@originat.demon.co.uk]
  Phone: 0370 462071 (Mobile), +44 (0)1865 843155 (Elsevier)