*BSD News Article 87436


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Date: Thu, 23 Jan 1997 11:47:51 -0600
From: david_levin@xircom.com
Subject: Re: 100Base-T PCMCIA ?
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Message-ID: <854040205.9997@dejanews.com>
Organization: Deja News Usenet Posting Service
References: <32DAA92B.3F54@browncow.com> <5bkmbg$duv@flea.best.net> <32E0F719.41C67EA6@net-tel.co.uk>
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In article <32E0F719.41C67EA6@net-tel.co.uk>,
  Andrew Gordon <andrew.gordon@net-tel.co.uk> wrote:
> 
> Matt Dillon wrote:
> > 
> > :In article <32DAA92B.3F54@browncow.com>, Bill Kish  <kish@browncow.com> wrote:
> > :>Does anyone have any information concerning 100Base-T PCMCIA cards
> > :>that might be suppported? If not how about cards that have specs 
> > 
> >     I have always thought that PCMCIA used ISA-like bus timing and
> >     frequencies, which would make PCMCIA's maximum bandwidth somewhere
> >     around 5 MBytes/sec.  This would appear to preclude being able
> >     to get good performance out of a 100Base-T PCMCIA ethernet card.
> >     (verses a PCI 100BaseT card, where PCI has 130MBytes/sec of
> >     available bandwiddh).
> 
> Traditional PCMCIA is ISA-limited, but many modern machines
> have CardBus PCMCIA slots.  CardBus is (roughly speaking)
> PCI run over with a steamroller to make it fit in a PCMCIA size.
> 
> However, I have yet to see any 100baseTX cards (nor many CardBus
> cards for that matter - CardBus is mainly prominent in the
> adverts for portables rather than for devices to plug in).

A little bit of understand.  Yes PCMCIA (PC-Card) is based on ISA bus.  Notebook make moved the controller onto the PCI bus.  Xircom makes a 100MB pcmcia creditcard ethernet adapter.  The pcmcia controler is a 16-bit interface.  Carbus is a new 32-bit interface.  These controllers are also on the PCI bus.  Xircoms also make a Cardbus 100mb adapter.  The difference is throughput.  No one get 100mb thoughput, they just use 100mb signals.  The pcmcia adapter gets around 30mb throughput.  The cardbus adapter g
ets 40-60mb throughtput depending on the enviroment.  40-60mb throughput is also what you get when you use a PCI network card in your desktop mahcines.

David Levin

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