From owner-freebsd-hardware Tue Mar 26 21:04:55 1996 Return-Path: owner-hardware Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.3/8.7.3) id VAA19299 for hardware-outgoing; Tue, 26 Mar 1996 21:04:55 -0800 (PST) Received: from GndRsh.aac.dev.com (GndRsh.aac.dev.com [198.145.92.241]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.3/8.7.3) with SMTP id VAA19294 for ; Tue, 26 Mar 1996 21:04:51 -0800 (PST) Received: (from rgrimes@localhost) by GndRsh.aac.dev.com (8.6.12/8.6.12) id VAA07861; Tue, 26 Mar 1996 21:04:23 -0800 From: "Rodney W. Grimes" Message-Id: <199603270504.VAA07861@GndRsh.aac.dev.com> Subject: Re: motherboard and Ethernet card recommendations To: jas@flyingfox.COM (Jim Shankland) Date: Tue, 26 Mar 1996 21:04:22 -0800 (PST) Cc: hardware@freebsd.org In-Reply-To: <199603270107.RAA19327@saguaro.flyingfox.com> from Jim Shankland at "Mar 26, 96 05:07:47 pm" X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4ME+ PL11 (25)] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-hardware@freebsd.org X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk > I hope this is not so frequently asked a question that I'm being > annoying, but I would appreciate any words of wisdom regarding > Pentium motherboard and Ethernet card selection for a FreeBSD machine. > > The criteria for the motherboard are: > > * rock solid stable; > * no buggy chipsets or goofy cache coherency problems; > * no weird hardware limitations. XX. ASI ASUS-PCI/I-P55TP4N Motherboard w/256K 8nS PBurst SRAM cache $ 210.00 > The criteria for the Ethernet card are: > > * rock solid stable; > * excellent performance (should be able to keep up with > basically a full-speed Ethernet packet stream); > * excellent, very stable FreeBSD device driver. XX. TMG EFA18215 EFA PCI Ethernet Card, 10BaseT & BNC, DC21040 $ 85.00 (Basically _most_ DEC DC21x4x based ethernet cards are okay, but watchout, some of them (Revision D2 and later Compex cards) have used some of the DEC stuff in ways that are very strange and cause you lots of problems, like not working with FreeBSD. > A secondary goal is to have a non-brain-damaged BIOS that can be > configured so that the machine will boot without a keyboard, and > ideally without a graphics card. The keyboard part is no problem, unfortanetly most BIOSes won't go without a video card :-(. > Note that cost is *not* a primary concern, though of course I'm not > intent on spending any money I don't need to. > > I'd be happy to take responses by email, and summarize to the list, > if that's appropriate. > > Thanks in advance. > > Jim Shankland > Flying Fox Computer Systems, Inc. > -- Rod Grimes rgrimes@gndrsh.aac.dev.com Accurate Automation Company Reliable computers for FreeBSD