umcarls9@ccu.umanitoba.ca (Charles Carlson) (02/28/90)
I flip through Computer Shopper and I see Ethernet cards advertised for around the $150 mark. Can someone tell me: 1) Are Ethernet cards basically generic in form? Ie, if I buy LANtastic now, and I need to upgrade to Novell later, will the same Ethernet boards work? Or does each network require its own specialized Ethernet board? 2) Do these boards come with the low level drivers required to interface to any netbios/lanbios with? 3) Are there performance differences in these boards? 4) Anything I missed that others can tell me? Does anyone have any experience with Novell ETS II? I've been given the understanding that ETS II doesn't require you to specially format your hard disk like Netware does? Any help would be appreciated! Thanks, Charles
nelson@sun.soe.clarkson.edu (Russ Nelson) (03/01/90)
In article <1990Feb28.002619.16469@ccu.umanitoba.ca> umcarls9@ccu.umanitoba.ca (Charles Carlson) writes:
I flip through Computer Shopper and I see Ethernet cards advertised for
around the $150 mark. Can someone tell me:
1) Are Ethernet cards basically generic in form? Ie, if I buy LANtastic
now, and I need to upgrade to Novell later, will the same Ethernet
boards work? Or does each network require its own specialized
Ethernet board?
All Ethernet cards are basically totally different in form. Several
companies have recently started to clone Novell's cards, however that
doesn't really help.
2) Do these boards come with the low level drivers required to interface
to any netbios/lanbios with?
I don't know. All that I can say is that if you get the packet driver
version of IPX, and a packet driver exists for your board, you're in business.
Availability information for the Clarkson collection of packet drivers
is appended.
3) Are there performance differences in these boards?
Yes, however, most of the current Ethernet boards have roughly the same
performance. Some of the newer bus mastering boards have the potential
for higher performance, but I don't think the software exists to take
good advantage of them yet.
The Clarkson packet driver collection
Availability
The Clarkson collection of packet drivers is available by FTP, by
archive-server, Fido file request, and by modem. They come in two flavors
-- executables only (drivers.arc), and source+executables (driverss.arc).
All of the following instructions apply to both drivers.arc and
driverss.arc.
FTP:
sun.soe.clarkson.edu:/pub/ka9q/drivers.arc
grape.ecs.clarkson.edu:/e/tcpip/drivers.arc
Archive-server:
Send mail to archive-server@sun.soe.clarkson.edu and put the following
command as the body of your message:
help
This will send you a help message. Reading this help message will tell
you how to fetch the packet drivers.
Modem:
Call the Clarkson Heath User's Group's BBS: (315)268-6667, 8N1,
1200/2400 Baud, 24 hours. Change to file area 24 and download drivers.arc.
Opus:
260/360 in the Nodelist. Drivers.arc is file requestable.
--
--russ (nelson@clutx [.bitnet | .clarkson.edu]) Russ.Nelson@$315.268.6667
Violence never solves problems, it just changes them into more subtle problems