[rescue] Fast Ethernet with a Sparc Classic

[James Birdsall]

My main router is a 4/6xx with two qfes. Out of the eight interfaces, 
I'm only using three: the first card has the line to the outside world 
and one subnet, and the second card has the other subnet. Said line to 
the outside world is (theoretically) 20Mbit down. For the most part this 
arrangement works really well, but there are some activities 
(particularly downloading a game from Steam) which cause weird issues: 
the download is still fine, but it won't route packets between the 
subnets anymore unless I pause the download. It makes me wonder if one 
heavily-loaded interface on a card can saturate the SBus interface.

Since the original poster has a similar downlink speed and is 
considering a machine with just one qfe, this issue could cause them a 
lot more trouble. As for me, I've been considering moving up to 
something with PCI slots and one Fast Ethernet interface per slot.

Speaking of qfes and 4c systems, I tried one in my SS2 at some point and 
it didn't work.


On 5/31/2013 10:00 PM, Kurt M. Nowak wrote:
> On 5/31/2013 6:25 PM, Mouse wrote:
>>>> 1) can an SS Classic even take a quad fast ethernet sbus card?
>>> if it has an sbus slot, i'd say yes.
>> I'd say maybe.  I've seen cards work in one machine and not in another
>> because one machine firmware version is prepared to handle them but the
>> other isn't.
>>
>> Whether a Classic _can_ have firmware old enough to fail to handle a
>> qfe - or new enough to handle it, as the case may be - I don't know.
> Yeah, that's what I was thinking too. sunstuff.org says that the
> 501-5443 is "compatible with any Sparc SBUS system, but I find that hard
> to believe that it would work on a sun4c. I figured since a classic is a
> 4m, there might be a chance it'll work.
>>
>>> isn't the qfe just 4 hmes?  that's what the onboard ethernet is.
>> On the Classic?  Are you sure?  I'm moderately sure all the lunchbox
>> machines have only 10Mbit onboard.  (I'm in the middle of a move and
>> most of my SPARCs are packed, or I'd fire one up and check.)
> All lunch boxes have onboard 10BaseT Lance Ethernet.... So does my SS5,
> 10, and 20.
>>
>> I think a qfe is 4 hmes, but it's 4 hmes in the same sbus slot, which
>> the ROM code may not be prepared to handle.
>
> Yes, the the qfe is just 4 happy meals...
>
> Well if anyone has a qfe lying around they dont want anymore, id love to
> try it out....epay seems to have lots of them for pretty cheap too...
>>
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