plain-vanilla ethernet; do brands matter?

Michael A. Peters mpeters at mac.com
Wed Jun 8 07:21:52 UTC 2005


On Wed, 2005-06-08 at 07:46 +0100, THUFIR HAWAT wrote:
> I urgently need a second ethernet (RJ-45 telephone-looking type) NIC
> in my computer, which is about a year old, el cheapo but with USB 2.0,
> so decent for my needs (sorry, don't have mother board details at the
> moment).
> 
> the local store is willing to install a SMC one for a good price.  my
> only concern is the brand.  ethernet is very well understood (meaning
> old technology) and I just need plain-vanilla, but I don't want to
> have to fiddle with anything, configuring hardware or whatever, if the
> hardware doesn't run well under linux.
> 
> does the brand matter, or will anything that says "ethernet" fit the
> bill? 

I have yet to run across anything that is 10/100 that is a PCI card that
doesn't just work - but if you want to be sure, Linksys cards (afaik)
always work.

Sometimes onboard ethernet doesn't always work - IE the onboard nic on
my nforce2 board (it works now, thanks to reverse engineering) but if
you get a Linksys 10/100 NIC it will cost you maybe $10.00 in the U.S.
(are you in the US??) and is very easy to install yourself - you don't
need to pay a labor fee to have it installed (where I use to work, as a
hardware tech, we'd charge $45.00 for that - it took us maybe 5 minutes
to put the card in, then just booting to make sure the card was
seen/install drivers - not really worth the expense imho)





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