Re: [Etherboot-developers] Wanted -the sis900 etherboot developer

[Markus G. <ma...@gu...>]

RTL8139 based NIC cards can be had for less than $5 (search on 
www.froogle.com or www.pricewatch.com). For 30 cards, you can probably 
negotiate a price of less than $150 including shipping and tax.

These cards aren't the fastest, but they definitly can do better than 1 
Mbps.

Given this low price, it might be more cost-effective to just buy the cards.


Markus

stanimir wrote:
> Hi everybody,
> I'm an old etherboot user and a LTSP project fen.
> Recently we deployed 30 workstation - thin clients in an UK school.
> The MB are PCCHIPS M810 (no Linux support) - all-in-one, the integrated 
> LAN adapter is sis900,the etherboot 5.0.8 driver recognise it as sis900 
> with VIA 6103 PHYtransiver.After flashing the bios with the etherboot 
> image the system boots up perfectly. But the performance in linux is 
> terrible. I tryed everything, change the switch, test with crossover 
> cable directly to the server, change the server, change the linux 
> distro, test 5-6 different sis900 drivers, change the LTSP kernel, 
> recompile several times the LTSP kernel with different sis900 drivers, 
> change BIOS setings- NOTHING!
> I repeat NOTHING!!!
> The network performance is still teriblle - aldo the switch lights 
> indicate 100mMbits - full duplex, by my opinion the net speed is no more 
> then 1Mbits - half duplex.
> When turn off the onboard card and put any other 100mbits card - 
> everything is just fine.
> I noticed that etheboot driver recognise the sis900 PHYtransiver as VIA 
> 6103, but the linux driver says - UNKNOWN PHYTRANSIVER and continues 
> booting and working but with that terribly slow speed.
> I'm not C coder, but when I browsed sis900.c file in all linux modiles, 
> which I managed to find in SIS web site and in kernel.org, I noticed 
> that there is missing the code considering VIA 6103 PHYtransiver.
> Only the etherboot driver sis900.c has rows in the sorce code describing 
> it.
> Can this be the answer of that network speed slowdown?
> I read that etherboot driver are coded from normal linux drivers, but 
> apparently I can not find one with VIA6103 PHYtransiver support.
> 
> Please, if you can help, contact me as soon as possible.
> 
> I would rather pay for the development of Linux driver, then to buy 30 
> new LAN cards.
> 
> 
> 
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