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Date:      Mon, 16 Apr 2001 13:07:04 -0500 (CDT)
From:      Chris Dillon <cdillon@wolves.k12.mo.us>
To:        Soren Kristensen <soren@soekris.com>
Cc:        <freebsd-small@FreeBSD.ORG>
Subject:   Re: The ultimate board!
Message-ID:  <Pine.BSF.4.32.0104161259180.1349-100000@mail.wolves.k12.mo.us>
In-Reply-To: <3AD8BADA.9F521991@soekris.com>

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On Sat, 14 Apr 2001, Soren Kristensen wrote:

> Hi Chris,
>
> I'm the hardware designer, so let me comments on your comments :-)
>
> Chris Dillon wrote:
> >
> > [...snip...]
> > > sis0: <NatSemi DP83815 10/100BaseTX> port 0xe000-0xe0ff mem 0xa0000000-0xa0000ff
> >
> > Ewww... Is this a good enough Ethernet chipset?  I've not had good
> > luck with any of SiS's stuff.  They seem to make, for lack of a nicer
> > word, crap.
> >
>
> This is not a SIS chip, but a National Semiconductor chip. They
> have made ethernet chips for the last 20 years. I don't trust SIS
> either, but I belive that the DP83815 is natsemi quality. I also
> don't know why it's so close to the SIS chip, but natsemi probably
> bought the MAC core design from SIS....

The design of the core itself is what I'm wondering about.  Anybody
can manufacture a quality chip these days, but it takes talent to
design one.

> The only limit on the DP83815 is the requirement for 32 bit
> alligned RX buffers. Otherwise it has all the good features and is
> cheap, $7 in 1K quantity.

Not bad.  But what is the cost of some of the better chips such as the
DEC/Intel 21143 or even an Intel 8255x at that quantity?


-- Chris Dillon - cdillon@wolves.k12.mo.us - cdillon@inter-linc.net
   FreeBSD: The fastest and most stable server OS on the planet.
   For IA32 and Alpha architectures. IA64, PPC, and ARM under development.
   http://www.freebsd.org



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