Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!think.com!sdd.hp.com!mips!pacbell.com!ucsd!ogicse!hsdndev!cmcl2!panix!alexis From: alexis@panix.uucp (Alexis Rosen) Newsgroups: comp.unix.aux Subject: Re: Non-Apple Ethernet cards (Re: Apple hardware) Keywords: ethernet Message-ID: <1991Jun14.052133.13353@panix.uucp> Date: 14 Jun 91 05:21:33 GMT References: <3105@redstar.cs.qmw.ac.uk> <3062@public.BTR.COM> Organization: PANIX - Public Access Unix Systems of NY Lines: 27 Thad Floryan writes about his Tri-Data card, which works perfectly under A/UX 2.0.1 for him. (Or was it 2.0.0? It shouldn't matter, though.) First of all, all that he says of the Tri-Data is true of the Asante boards as well. I'm very happy with them. Recently, they cut their prices to under $400 for their entire line of boards. Support has always been good. A few questions about the Tri-Data (I've never seen them): Does it have a 64KB buffer? As of A/UX 2.0.0, 16KB is "not supported" and could conceivably cause crashes (I think William R. wrote about this). What's the price? Is it register-compatible with the Apple board? That's one reason I've stuck with the Asante boards- they can run with Apple's drivers, so I don't have to worry about the kind of thing that has happened to owners of the older Kinetics/Excellan/Novell/Dayna EtherPort cards (i.e., no support = no drivers = can't use it under A/UX 2.0) If the Tri-Data board compares well with the Asante on these three points then it's a good card. I won't swear to it but I think I found that FTP between a Mac IIfx and a Sun IPC ran at about 110KB/sec with the Asante. Assuming that the IPC is as fast as the Sun 3, the Tri-Data may have an edge over the Asante. (Then again, that may be a very poor assumption.) --- Alexis Rosen Owner/Admin, Panix Public Access Unix alexis@panix.com