From owner-freebsd-current  Thu Oct  2 08:49:13 1997
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To: Jason Young <doogie@forbidden-donut.anet-stl.com>
cc: Garrett Wollman <wollman@khavrinen.lcs.mit.edu>,
        =?KOI8-R?B?4c7E0sXKIP7F0s7P1w==?= <ache@nagual.pp.ru>,
        FreeBSD-current <current@FreeBSD.ORG>
Subject: Re: Which PCI Ethernet card is best for FreeBSD-current? 
In-reply-to: Your message of "Thu, 02 Oct 1997 09:43:00 -0000."
             <Pine.BSF.3.96.971002094152.2226A-100000@forbidden-donut.anet-stl.com> 
From: David Greenman <dg@root.com>
Reply-To: dg@root.com
Date: Thu, 02 Oct 1997 08:51:25 -0700
Sender: owner-freebsd-current@FreeBSD.ORG
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>> Intel EE Pro/100B, without question.  Second choice, DEC DE500 and
>> some clones.  Never buy anything from 3Com.
>
>May I inquire as to why you don't like 3Com? They work for me, I've got a
>mix of 3Com and DEC switching 10/100s around here with zero problems.

   Not speaking for Garrett, but the 3Com device drivers (ep/vx) in FreeBSD
have had a long tradition of having various problems. In addition, the PCI
3Com cards aren't up to the performance levels that they are capable of;
apparantly, 3Com won't release the information about programming the PCI
DMA for them without an NDA (or at all??)...which means that they have to
be used in "compatibility" mode, which I believe is programmed I/O (yech).

-DG

David Greenman
Core-team/Principal Architect, The FreeBSD Project