At 01:28 PM 12/26/2002 -0200, you wrote:
> The 3C905C is no longer available: if you ask for one, you get given the > 905CX, which has the go-faster bits removed. Go instead for the 3C980C, > which appears to be a direct reincarnation of the 905C. I checked and we got both types. We recently received some 3C906C, but mostly 3C905CX. The first is a traditional-size card and the other is a smaller-size card, the size of an Intel eepro100. They seem to be quite equivalent, same drivers, same performance. I tested one of the 3C905CX and it got over 10 KBps in a few cases, quite close to the nominal rate which is 12.5 KBps for 100 Mbps. I can see no performance difference.
It has been my experience that you can always get discontinued cards (mostly pulls) from the "Not Exactly" section on Pricewatch... considering that they are about half-price... you can tolerate the occasional PCI shunt.
But Realtek-based cards are still cheaper new. And like almost everything in the Beowulf business, more of cheaper trumps fewer of better. I am etherbooting off of my Realteks (onboard the ECS K7SEM). Do you have a PXE Boot Agent (or equivalent) in your BIOS?
ftp://aiedownload.intel.com/df-support/3046/ENG/Relnotes.rtf *********************************** Kurt Keville Debian Beowulf Users Group (DeBUG) http://www.extreme-linux.com Cluster On! ***********************************