Would there be any drawbacks to using an isa nic card? I dont want to use up my pci slots. I was thinking about picking up a 3com 3C515-TX (its a 10/100 nic). Anyhow any comments would be welcome.

If it isn't a P6 then it isn't a processor
110% BX fanboy

ISA is very slow only offers 2MB/s.

no...that makes no sense, that would mean that the isa bus runs 1mhz.

<A HREF="http://www.pcguide.com/ref/mbsys/buses/funcBandwidth-c.html" target="_new">http://www.pcguide.com/ref/mbsys/buses/funcBandwidth-c.html</A>

At full theoretical throughput a 100 megabit nic card will only be transfering 13.33MB/s while a standard 16 bit isa bus can put out 16.6MB/s (assuming for simpicity of calculation 1 megabyte is 10^6 bytes). Of course there will be some hardware overhead etc, but i doubt my home network will be able to exceed 80 mb/s.

If it isn't a P6 then it isn't a processor
110% BX fanboy

i doubt you would see anything near 80

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No problems unless you have IRQ issues and I don't think you will with an Intel chipset. (If you had a VIA chipset that might be a different story).

I still use ISA NICs but they are really, really, really old 10 mbit cards. I was about to upgrade them to 100 mbit (I only have two PCs) but I noticed a post by Crashman which suggested using Firewire to get 400 mbit transfers, and that would be cool!


<b>56K, slow and steady does not win the race on internet!</b>

everything worked out ok, purchased the nic for 7 bux from ebay...it was some 3com 10/100 nic. It runs totally fine and i actually notice that it is a bit peppier than my shitty dlink pci card that failed me. Basically the nic is just more responsive while surfing (downloads are same speed)...its hard to explain how. Also i feel that this nic has a good deal of hardware acceleration and doesnt have much cpu usage when transfering files across my home network.

Now that i think of it, i have purchased 4 dlink products, 2 of them have failed...nice record huh?

If it isn't a P6 then it isn't a processor
110% BX fanboy

Glad you didn't have to pay a premium for old technology.

I was wondering, just how many PCI devices do you think you will be using that you didn't want to use up one PCI slot?



<b>56K, slow and steady does not win the race on internet!</b>

radeon 9500 with piii heatsink mounted...2 pci slots...

sound card

tv tuner

modem

Thats 5, my bx133 only has 5 slots and 1 isa.

You may call it old technology...but it seems to perform better than my pci nic so IMO thats still a step in the right driection.

If it isn't a P6 then it isn't a processor
110% BX fanboy

Old technology? Not from my point of view. I think my NICs are 12 years old (replacements on the way), one of my sound cards is 9 years old, a 5 year-old modem died leaving me with a 7+ year old modem (pre v.90 but firmware updated) and an ATI AIW (original) PCI which I don't recall the age.

Talk about old technology.

<b>56K, slow and steady does not win the race on internet!</b>

Anyhow...ya i have a lot of old stuff too...i mean how many people have their socket 7 boards still in service? Hell i still have/use an SB16 scsi card along with a old SCSI cdrom drive that requires disk caddies!

If it isn't a P6 then it isn't a processor
110% BX fanboy

I only have two computers and one of them is a Socket 7 (well a Super Socket 7). It sits in my 1987 AT case. When I finally scrounge a new motherboard and memory for my main system this POS FIC 503+ is going in the trash. I don't even want the liability of giving it to someone.

SCSI and disc caddies? I had one of those configs. Do you need any caddies?

<b>56K, slow and steady does not win the race on internet!</b>

i use mine as an mp3 player.

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naw i got 2 or 3. My scsi is starting to flake out...sometimes cdrom isnt detected...it could be the drive...but my gut tells me its the card.

If it isn't a P6 then it isn't a processor
110% BX fanboy