At 12:21 PM 6/18/00 +0100, Alan Cox wrote:
>> I know it's a big cpu time consumer. And I could switch to 3Com
>> EtherLink III (ISA) but I don't think it'll help a lot. I'll try in the
>
>You want to get off ISA, even to low end PCI bus masters (just avoid NE2K
PCI
>clones)
>
>> ah... how speedy? I think a 450mhz is quite a runner. and the 100mhz fsb
>> improves a lot.
Realize that with bridging you have to read every packet on the wire, and
with the 8390 architecture, unless you fudge the code, you have to IO snarf
the entire packet to get the header....which is a real bummer. Good bridge
code will only inhale the header first..and then the rest of the packet if
needed, but I dont believe that ne2000 driver in linux implements this. The
ISA 16 bit bus is only about 25Mb/s with overhead, so it can really suck up
your cpu. 8-bit ISA cards have less bus than the wire, so they are
completely unusable even at 10Mb/s
Rule of thumb: dont do bridging with ISA cards. Period.
Dennis
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