Re: Correct 3c905 model?

Bogdan Costescu wrote:

>On Fri, 31 Oct 2003, Rodrigo Severo wrote:
>
>  
>
>>Which model to I have exactly? I am sending the output of vortex-diag -aemf.
>>    
>>
>
>As the output says, you have a Boomerang card a.k.a 3C905 (no letter).
>  
>
Yeah, that's what I thought.

>This is an older generation card with MII (including autonegotiation) on a
>separate chip as opposed to included on-chip for 3C905C; this however
>doesn't make so much of a difference. The bigger difference might be in
>the DMA engine; the newer 3C905B and 3C905C can poll a memory location to
>find out if a new packet is queued while the older cards like the 3C905
>need the CPU to actively do I/O, which means lots of CPU cycles wasted for
>today's fast CPUs - this feature is used by the Scyld driver, not used by
>the driver distributed with the kernel. The newer cards (905B and 905C) 
>also have a better (and more customizable) usage of the PCI bus.
>  
>
I was afraid I hadn't get the best material at all.

>These are all theoretical differences. As I don't have any Boomerang card, 
>I cannot comment on the difference that it makes in practice...
>  
>
Well, I believe that as I paid for the newer stuff, I won't try to find 
out and just get the 3c905C model.


Thanks for your attention and help,

Rodrigo Severo


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