The performance of a 3c905 in PIO mode at 100Mb/sec is quite pointless, you
really need bus-mastering at that speed for it to be worth using that card
(especially when there are cheaper cards that work fine that way).
Furthermore, the 0.41 3c905 driver is a big improvement over 0.40, and IMHO
the busmastering support *is* going to get stable soon.
When I talked to Donald Becker a couple of weeks ago he was planning to be
working on both 3c59x/905 and tulip drivers right about now, and was
looking at the reported problems and patches. He also was planning to get
these new versions into 2.0.31. So unless 2.0.31 is going to come out
within the next week I'd suggest just being more patient.
For those who would like to *help* him, I'd suggest trying to test and
collect together patches and problem reports in a much more concise form
before sending them to him or the driver mailing lists, and concentrate
testing on 0.41 plus 0.41 with the couple of patches to it that others have
come up with (and 0.76 plus patches on the tulip side). It is amazing how
many people write messages addressed personally to Donald out of the blue
describing a problem in the 0.40 driver which everyone has beaten to death
for 2 months already; so Donald sometimes ends up missing more important
messages due to the high volume.
It would also be a good idea for everyone with Epic (SMC EtherPower II)
10/100 cards to get busy testing out his epic100.c driver, but I doubt that
would go in 2.0.31, there just hasn't been enough feedback on that driver
yet.
David
Niemi@erols.com 703-810-5538 Reston, Virginia, USA
--- Most operating systems, sometimes even DOS, separate different
--- types of files into different directories. The Windows philosophy:
--- Throw everything into C:\WINDOWS and let God sort it out.