Re: Ethernet drivers

[tlang@dialup.becom.net (Torsten Lang)]

Hi!
> 
> I was looking at the full MiNTnet distribution and noticed that
> Torsten Lang made some drivers for a couple of DMA/ACSI Ethernet 
> adapters called Bionet and PAM, plus VME cards Riebel and PAM.
> 
> Does anybody have any infos about those?  Are they still made?
> Is there a URL or e-mail address to contact their manufacturers?
> 
Well, I'm sorry to tell you that none of them is available any more in
bigger quantities. Karl Brandt, System Solutions UK has some Riebl boards
(VME and MEGA ST) left, they may kost around 100-120Pd, I don't know exactly.
Best Electronics is completely sold out. Axel Gehringer still has some BIONET
DMA adaptors left (~150DM).
There's also a solution for (MEGA) STs from Roland Skuplik, the "Panther II"
board. It consists of a processor adaptor and a ISA board with two slots.
My NE2000 driver is also available for this solution. You can reach Roland at
Roland_Skuplik@do2.maus.de.
For unaccelerated systems you may use whatever you want. If you use a
accelerated system or a TT please DON'T use the BIONET adaptors. You will
run into trouble with them.
The Riebl boards also are not very reliable due to some design bugs concerning
the memory management. BTW, the AMD LANCE baseed PAM's Net adaptors (at least 
VME) seem to be faster than the Riebl boards.
If you use a PAK/3 maybe the best solution is Roland's Panther II board.
>
> The docs also say that those drivers were in early development
> stage and that improved functionality/stability was expected
> once Kay Roemer implemented a few missing functions in MiNTnet.
> 
Well, the documentation is not very actual. Kay Roemer passed the development
to me, so now I'm the official MiNT-Net maintainer. For actual drivers take
a look at net-1.03beta2.tar.gz (ftp.uni-giessen.de), I've done a lot of
work for some of the drivers.
>
> Whatever happened to those planned MiNTnet improvements?
> 
Well, I think it's up to me now to do these. I have to thank Kay that he -
as a last step - included a feature I needed for samba and the named.

Regards,
   Torsten