ddp+@ANDREW.CMU.EDU (Drew Daniel Perkins) (02/15/89)
In the Feb 1989 issue of LAN magazine on page 113, there is an add by Xinetron Inc. (408) 426-1850. They claim to make two ethernet cards. The XiNET/Ether EtherNet Card claims to be "Fully Novell NE-1000 Compatible and sells for $225 (list), $169 (reseller qty 1-9) and $159 (reseller qty 10+). Also, the XINET-303 claims to be "Fully compatible with the Western-Digital EtherCard Plus" and sells for $239, $179, $175. Has anyone heard of Xinetron? How about the Novell NE-1000 card? I've heard of it, but I don't remember hearing of anyone with a TCP/IP driver for it. $159 is almost 25% less than any other price I've ever heard of. Even $175 is better than the best price I've heard for real WD8003's. Drew
jbvb@VAX.FTP.COM (James Van Bokkelen) (02/17/89)
The Novell NE-1000 is bit-for-bit compatible with the Nat Semi "Demo Board", that we support as the "DP839EB". National gave away the plans to promote the 8390 LAN controller chip, many people used them. I know nothing about this particular clone, though. James B. VanBokkelen We're moving. After 2/26, the new number FTP Software Inc. will be (617) 246-0900.
ddp+@ANDREW.CMU.EDU (Drew Daniel Perkins) (02/17/89)
How does the performance of the Novell NE-1000 (and Nat Semi Demo Board) compare with the Western Digital card? It seems that the Demo board uses DMA whereas the Western Digital uses shared memory. I'm curious which turned out to be faster and why Western Digital didn't use Nat Semi's design. Drew
jbvb@VAX.FTP.COM (James Van Bokkelen) (02/18/89)
In the testing I have done, the shared-memory cards are almost always faster than the DMA or programmed-I/O cards, on AT class machines. AT DMA is crippled, and programmed I/O appears to be slower than REP MOVSW. Presumably the shared memory costs somewhat in terms of bus arbitration and possibly faster or more expensive RAM chips; I am not a hardware engineer. Of course, space for shared memory is likely to be scarce on some machines, DMA is even scarcer (unless you add AT bus fingers), so some vendors just use I/O ports. W-D has never told me why they didn't use the Nat Semi design, but then again, 3Com didn't use it for the 3C503 (which does shared memory, DMA and I/O all on the same card) either. James B. VanBokkelen We're moving. After 2/26, the new number FTP Software Inc. will be (617) 246-0900.