[rescue] FDDI on Sparc 5 / Indigo2 / DEC3000

[Jochen Kunz]

Hi.

Most of my machines are from the pre 100MBit/s Ethernet age. (In fact
only the "fat" Alpha PWS500au has 100MBit/s) To get rid of that old coax
cable and get a bit more performance out of the network I EPAYed a pair
of Cabletron ESX-1320 12 Port 10MBit/s Ethernet switches with FDDI
uplink, brige module, manageable, ... 70,-EUR (~70,-US$) for both. Good
deal, I think. 

Primary intention was to move to a switched Ethernet. But then I thought
why not spend a few EUR for a DEFPA and use the FDDI uplink to the
PWS500au? And why not an additional DEFTA for the DEC3000? A GIO FDDI
card for the Indigo2? Some SBus thing for the Sparc 5??? I noticed that
100MBit Ethernet cards, if available at all, are _very_ expensive. Much
more than FDDI. So why not use FDDI? OK, I need a concentrator if there
is a non DAS card, but I saw them go for around 10,-EUR on EPay. 

So I need some advice now:

What FDDI SBus card should I get? It seams that there are different
available. Is it at all worth to get one? (I don't need FDDI if the card
/ driver congests trafic at 2..3MB/s.[1]) OS in question is NetBSD, but
this will be replaced by Solaris 8 as soon as I get more RAM for the
machine. (SS5, 110MHz, 64MB) [2]

Any experience with GIO FDDI cards in a Indio2? (150MHz R4400)

No questions about the Alphas. DEF{T,P}A is the way to go. Period. :-)

[1] I have a 100MBit/s Ethernet card (that 3Com EISA thing) for my
Indigo2 but it maxes out at ~3MB/s. I was really disapointed about that
poor performance. 
[2] Yes. I don't expect that this 110MHz SS5 will be a speed daemon with
Solaris, but I never got my hands on a Solaris box. So I will use this
machine to get some knowledge about Solaris. NetBSD is nice and my
preferred OS, but I have it well running on so many other machines...
-- 



tsch|_,
         Jochen

Homepage: http://www.unixag-kl.fh-kl.de/~jkunz/