Document: PCI networking cards for OS/2 Maintainer: Patrick Duffy, duffy@theory.chem.ubc.ca Revision Dates: 11/5/95, 12/3/95, 5/18/96 Archived at: ftp.netcom.com, in directory /pub/ab/abe/ CompuServe (GO BENCHMARK) Web pages: http://warp.eecs.berkeley.edu/os2/workbench/work.htm http://www.os2forum.or.at/english/info/os2hardwareinfo/ (note that the first URL may not have up-to-date versions of the lists) This document is intended for use by individuals and corporations in a non-commercial manner. It may be distributed freely within those limitations. Commercial use of this document in any manner requires prior written permission of the author. This is the PCI networking cards for OS/2 list. I try at all times to keep it accurate, so if you spot any flaws/omissions, please do not hesitate to let me know and I'll fix them for the next release. I've placed a '*' beside cards which I would recommend, and a '**' beside cards which I would pick for myself when assembling a PCI system. I've added the vendor's name and PCI ID in brackets after the card descriptions. The numbers are in HEX/decimal. Dates in brackets indicate the last revision date for the related entry. Useful Numbers: (5/18/96) --------------- 3Com: ftp.3com.com (FTP site) Adaptec: (800) 959-7274 (tech. support) ftp.adaptec.com (ftp site) www.adaptec.com (WWW site) Cogent (North America): (360) 378-2929 (voice) (360) 378-2882 (FAX) (800) 426-4368 (sales) (206) 603-0333 (sales) (206) 603-9223 (sales FAX) sales@cogentdata.com (sales E-Mail) support@cogentdata.com (tech. support E-Mail) www.cogentdata.com (WWW site) ftp.pacificrim.net/cogentdata (FTP site) ftp.pipex.net/incoming/cogent (FTP site) Cogent (Europe): [49]89/231138-88 (voice) [49]89/231138-11 (FAX) IBM: www.raleigh.ibm.com (WWW site) Olicom: ftp.olicom.com (FTP site) Racal: www.racal.com (WWW site) SMC: ftp.smc.com (FTP site) PART ONE: ATM cards -------------------- Manufacturer Model Comments ------------------------------------------------------ Adaptec Adaptec will (soon) be releasing two PCI ATM networking cards which sound like they'd be ideal for the truly speed-hungry. Both cards busmaster. One card does 25 Mbit/s, and the other does 155 Mbit/s. NT drivers are nearing completion, and OS/2 drivers are next in line. Now all I need is an ATM line... (Adaptec: 9004/36868) (8/27/95) PART TWO: Ethernet cards ------------------------- Manufacturer Model Comments ------------------------------------------------------ 3Com 3C59X** 3Com makes two different PCI ethernet cards. One, the 3C590, is 10 Mb/s only, and the other, the 3C595, is 10/100 MB/s. Both cards will busmaster (optionally), so for best performance put them in a busmastering slot. Both cards use what is referred to as "Parallel Tasking", which refers to the cards' use of a combination of frame pipelining and self-tuning anticipatory interrupts. Drivers (ODI and NDIS, available from the 3Com FTP site in /pub/adapters/drivers/3c59xn.exe) exist for the cards, which are reported to work very nicely under OS/2, with the exception that they may not co-exist nicely with Adaptec PCI SCSI cards (the combination of a 2940 and a 3c590 has been reported to hang machines). (3Com Corporation: 10B7/4279) (8/27/95) Cogent EM XXX Cogent makes PCI-based ethernet adapters, all of which now have OS/2 NDIS 2.0 drivers supporting full duplex ethernet and full duplex fast ethernet. All adapters are busmastering and feature something called "Predictive Pipelining". I've had no reports from anyone using these adapters yet, though. (5/18/96) The adapters are as follows: Fast Ethernet for 100BASE-T4: -eMASTER+ EM440 T4 Quartet PCI (four ports on one adapter) -eMASTER+ EM110 T4 10/100 PCI Fast Ethernet for 100BASE-TX: -eMASTER+ EM440 TX Quartet PCI 10/100 (four ports on one adapter) -eMASTER+ EM400 TX Quaret PCI (four ports on one adapter) -eMASTER+ EM110 TX 10/100 PCI -eMASTER+ EM100 TX PCI Fast Ethernet for 100BASE-FX: -eMASTER+ EM100 FX (available with SC or ST connectors) Standard Ethernet: -eMASTER+ EM960 PCI (with AUI port) -eMASTER+ EM964 Quartet PCI (four ports on one adapter, available in TP and BNC) Setup tips: The OS/2 NDIS 2.0 driver supports all the following keywords for all Cogent PCI adapters: [EMxxx_NIF] DRIVERNAME='value' MAXRECEIVES='value' MAXTRANSMITS='value' NETADDRESS='value' FullDuplex = 'true' or 'false' Transceiver = 'AUTOSENSE' or 'UTP' or 'THICK' or 'THIN' SharedIRQ = 'true' or 'false' IRQ = 'value' DisablePosting = 'true' or 'false' PCIBus='value' (PCI only) PCIDevice='value' (PCI only) CacheAlignment = 'value' BurstLength = 'value' TxThreshold = 'value' Compex ENET-32 This card has TP, AUI, and BNC connectors to the outside world and uses a Digital DC1003J chip. It does not, however, have drivers for OS/2, and there are currently no plans to produce any apparently. (Vendor ID unknown) (12/3/95) D-Link DE-530CT This card uses the DEC 21040 chip, busmasters, and comes with BNC and twisted pair connectors on the same card. It comes with NDIS drivers for all the major operating systems. The card is reported to work well in OS/2 but not in Windows for Workgroups. This, though, could be caused by the Neptune rev. 10 chipset in that system, as the same card has worked well in Triton chipset-based systems. The OS/2 NIF file does not include a section for selecting the BNC or twisted pair connector. As a result, on power up it defaults to the twisted pair, which causes delays if you're using BNC. (Vendor ID unknown) (8/27/95) Setup tips: Adding SIA_MODE = "BNC" to the [DC2IBM_nif] section of protocol.ini will tell the driver that the connection is via the BNC cable. Alternately, adding [SIA_MODE] tag = SIAMODE display = "Connector" type = string strlength = 3 default = "BNC" set = BNC, TP editable = yes to the DC2IBM.NIF file will give you the connector option in the network adapter setup program. D-Link DFE-500TX This card has connectors for twisted pair and coax cables, and uses the DEC chipset. It will not (yet) autodectect the speed of the connection. There are apparently no drivers for OS/2. (Vendor ID unknown) (8/27/95) HP J2585A This card can use PIO or memory-mapped PIO modes. It does not support busmastering. The mode used is selectable using the supplied HPVGSET utility. There are drivers for all the major operating systems, and the card has separate RJ45 connectors for 10 and 100 MB/s operation. (Hewlett Packard: 103C/4156) (8/27/95) Set-up tips: If you're using this card with a Netserver LC or LF, adjust the chipset register values as follows (accessible via the EISA setup utility): 1) Run the ECU with the advanced features enabled, i.i., type "cf /a" at the DOS prompt -OR- Run the ECU in the Advanced mode (press ctrl-A instead of Enter with the "Run configuration utility" highlighted) 2) Select "View or edit details" 3) Page down to "Advanced chipset registers" 4) Change the following settings (warning - avoid the and keys. Instead, use the key to move between fields). For 486-based servers: EISA Latency Timer = 1 For Pentium-based servers: CPU to PCI Write Buffers = 1 Gauranteed Access Time = 0 Bus Park = 1 EISA Latency Timer = 1. (This was tried on an HP 486 LC with a racalMilgo pci ethernet card. It still gives fifo UNDERRUNS during TX which cause delays in ethernet throughput.) To get the driver for the card to load successfully without a LAN connection, use HPVGSET to set the card's media support to either 10 MB/s or 100 MB/s. If you use the default, autosense, and the hub is not connected the driver will not be able to determine which connector to use and will abort with an error message. IBM 13H9237* This is IBM's PCI card. It supports 10 base-T and 10 base-5/fibre connections. It comes with drivers for all major operating systmes. The card busmasters and has two LEDs on the back (which are programmable) to indicate various traffic conditions on the network. The card is said not to work in a bridged PCI environment, though I'm not sure whether that means that it won't work if a PCI - PCI bridging adapter is present in the system or whether it will not work when placed on a bridge to the main PCI bus. The card comes with a configuration utility which will set the card up for level or edge-triggered interrupts and set the IRQ used. The card is reported to come with many pages of documentation which (in typical IBM fashion) are mostly not good for much. The card is reported to work well in at least two cases. (IBM: 1014/4116) (11/5/95) Intel Etherexpress I've no details on this particular Pro/100* card's features, but drivers for it are release level and reported (along with the card) to work quite well under Warp. (Intel: 8086/32902) (9/20/95) Intel Etherexpress This card is in the same family as Pro/100 Smart the card above, and includes a RISC processor and 2 MB of cache. There are drivers for Netware only, however. (Intel: 8086/32902) (9/20/95) Racal PCI T2* This is Racal's PCI card. It apparently has both ODI and NDIS drivers in the box, and uses the AMD AM7990 chip for its networking operations. The card will autosense whether the BNC or the twisted pair connector is being used on startup. The driver diskette is apparently missing a configuration file which must be obtained from their BBS in order to properly install under Lanserver. Other than that, the drivers are reported to work well (NDIS drivers with NetBios protocols). (Racal Interlan: 10A5/4261) (8/27/95) SMC PCI This is a family of three adapters EtherPower from SMC. They use a Digital chip, and drivers for ODI and NDIS are available. The cards are the SMC8432T (RJ45 connector), the SMC8432BT (RJ45 and BNC connectors), and the 10/100, which has RJ45 and DB9 connectors (this last card may or may not use the same drivers as the first two). There have been performance-related problems reported with the first two cards; one person has reported seeing his network performance drop from 1040 kB/sec to 400 kB/sec when switching from an SMC Elite16T ISA to this card. Still another reports that loading the drivers locks his system solid. One other person, however, has reported success, saying that the card works well on his Asus P54TP4, and all he had to do was replace the (outdated) drivers which came with Warp Connect with the newer drivers from the SMC FTP site. It is necessary to make sure that the card is terminated when you boot initially, or your machine will crash with a TRAP 0008 every time. (Standard Microsystems Corporation: 10B8/4280) (8/27/95) Zynx ZX312 PCI* This card is similar to the Racal card above, except that it does not automatically detect the connector (BNC or twisted pair) in use; this must be set with a jumper. The diskette/drivers provided have been reported to work well with TCP/IP, NetBios, and Lanserver. In one case, a newer version of the NDIS drivers has been reported to cause problems with NFS in Warp. Oddly enough, version 1.6x of the drivers (older ones) are reported to be error-free. (Vendor ID unknown) (9/20/95) Zynx ZX342 This card is similar to the 312 above. Drivers are said to exist for all major operating systems. (Vendor ID unknown) (8/27/95) PART THREE: Token Ring cards ----------------------------- Manufacturer Model Comments ------------------------------------------------------ Olicom TR 16/4 PCI** I know little of these cards except that they support plug and play and are reported to work well with OS/2. Both the card and Warp Connect come with all the necessary drivers. (Olicom: 108D/4237) (9/4/95) That's what I know. E-Mail/post with additions/corrections and I'll post again. -- Patrick Duffy, duffy@theory.chem.ubc.ca "Evil is out there making hand-crafted mischief for the swap meet of villany." -- The Tick