From owner-freebsd-questions Sun Aug 8 20:26:29 1999 Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mail1.lig.bellsouth.net (mail1.lig.bellsouth.net [205.152.0.55]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 19968150D1 for ; Sun, 8 Aug 1999 20:26:26 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from gljohns@bellsouth.net) Received: from gforce.johnson.home (host-209-214-147-26.msy.bellsouth.net [209.214.147.26]) by mail1.lig.bellsouth.net (3.3.0/8.9.3) with ESMTP id XAA07065; Sun, 8 Aug 1999 23:25:03 -0400 (EDT) Received: (from glenn@localhost) by gforce.johnson.home (8.9.3/8.9.3) id WAA36053; Sun, 8 Aug 1999 22:24:12 -0500 (CDT) (envelope-from glenn) Date: Sun, 8 Aug 1999 22:23:35 -0500 From: Glenn Johnson To: Christian Kratzer 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> References: <01a901bee060$1472c260$2e5685c7@srrc.usda.gov> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Mailer: Mutt 0.95.6i In-Reply-To: ; from Christian Kratzer on Sat, Aug 07, 1999 at 09:01:56AM +0200 Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG 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