ccjap@bu-cs.BU.EDU (John Papadopoulos) (09/19/87)
I'm working on an Ethernet interface of my own design and I would like to hear of your experiences with the various VLSI Ethernet controllers, with a particular emphasis on the LANCE (AMD 7990). I have heard rumours that the LANCE has problems, especially related to Ethenet over Broadband. I am not sure if this is due to the LANCE per se or because of a vendor's particular Ethernet interface design. In addition, the LANCE has gone through several revs, and probably a few more will occur. Were these ECO's very significant problems or did they have reasonable work-arounds? Are these bugs removed from the latest revisions? I've examined the specs for the AMD LANCE (AM7990), the Intel 82586, and and the NS DP8390 NIC. Since I've never designed with any of these devices, I don't know how important their various features (or lack there of) are going to become. My design is based upon the MC680xx CPUs so comments regarding coupling these units to these CPUs are especially desired. John Papadopoulos Boston University