[rescue] rescuing an ailing U10...

[Scott Quinn]

James wrote

> In retrofitting this U10 for an intended long future, I added an Intel
> PRO/1000 GT Desktop Adapter as a second NIC having gigabit capability.
>  It works fine, but in researching its feature set, I see it is a
> 32-bit card.  Was this a blunderous move?  I'm not trying to obsess
> over minute performance issues, but how does a 32-bit card function in
> a 64-bit architecture?
>
> Thanks again for any candor you care to share

PCI width or driver width?

Jochen addressed the software side.

The PCI "bitwidth" refers to the connection to the bus. Since the Ultra 
10 uses 32-bit PCI you'll have no benefit from a 64-bit card. The 
drivers are OS dependent, if you have one that works with your Solaris 
you don't have to worry about the kernel architecture (64-bit vs 
32-bit).

If you had a newer machine with 64-bit PCI then you'd see an advantage 
in a 64-bit wide card. In general, unless you're programming your own 
drivers, don't worry too much about the bit size. All decent 
architectures deal gracefully with 32-64 issues (except Alpha which 
doesn't need to worry).