Date: Sun, 8 Aug 1999 22:23:35 -0500 From: Glenn Johnson <gjohnson@nola.srrc.usda.gov> To: Christian Kratzer <ck@toplink.net> Cc: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Please comments about SMC 9432TX [Was: Re: 100mbit full-duplex capable card] Message-ID: <19990808222335.A7221@gforce.johnson.home> In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.4.10.9908070900010.2915-100000@hirvi.toplink.net>; from Christian Kratzer on Sat, Aug 07, 1999 at 09:01:56AM %2B0200 References: <01a901bee060$1472c260$2e5685c7@srrc.usda.gov> <Pine.LNX.4.10.9908070900010.2915-100000@hirvi.toplink.net>
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On Sat, Aug 07, 1999 at 09:01:56AM +0200, Christian Kratzer wrote: > Hi, > > On Fri, 6 Aug 1999, Glenn Johnson wrote: [snipp] > > [snipp] > > > Do not buy one. They are junk. Spend a little more and get an Intel > > or 3Com. > > could you please be more specific about that. We are quite happy with > the SMC 9432TX "EtherPower II" type of cards. Not to be confused with > what they sell as EtherEZ. > > EtherEZ != EtherPower > I most certainly am not confusing the EtherEZ with the EtherPower II. I can't give you numbers because I no longer have these cards installed, but here is what I experienced. I bought two of these cards (EtherPower II) because they were cheap and I heard they were good. I installed them on two of my machines connected on a Fast Ethernet switch. On one machine the network link would go down in about five minutes regardless of load. On the other machine, the network link would be ok unless I put it under a load, say FTP a 2Mb file. The link would freeze up. The only way to reset it was to do a 'ifconfig tx0 down' followed by a 'ifconfig tx0 up'. I replaced one of these cards with an Intel EtherExpress Pro and the other card with a 3Com 3C905B. I have had zero trouble with those. I even put the SMC card in a Windows machine, thinking that the Windows driver would be better. Well, I still had occasional network link freezes but the biggest problem was that performance even under Windows was slow. I replaced the SMC card in the Windows computer as well and saw a big improvement in network speed. So my question to you is, are you running your SMC cards at full-duplex? It could be that they work fine at half-duplex. Also, perhaps you have a newer revision of the card. I remember there was some discussion of a hardware bug that required a work-around in the driver but maybe that was fixed in a later revision. In any event, I am glad that you are happy with your SMC EtherPower II cards. I was not happy with mine and was just responding to the question asked about Fast Ethernet full-duplex cards. -- Glenn Johnson gjohnson@nola.srrc.usda.gov To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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