Re: oops, 2nd ethernet card question

["Adam Williams" <awilliam@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> the deal. My Linux box has an ancient Wd8013 network card. Its set up to use
> IRQ3, which i think is a Bad Thing since someday i hope to hook something to
> Com1. besides, i wanted to get a newer PCI network card for a little better

My experience is that those WD8013 cards give pretty good performance,  way
better than an NE2000.  Make sure your WD8013 has the I/O memory mapping
enabled,  thats a big boost over IRQ-Poll-Download it has to use otherwise.

> right now, i see routers on SOHO networks, to be the best possible way to
> get Windoze users into Linux.
>

Hm.  I guess I'd agree, but I'm a little more agressive.  I think that those
who use thier computers to diddle about in various things will have no real
benefit from Linux, anymore than they did from Win95 vs. Wfwg.  It is people
who USE there computers to ACCOMPLISH tasks that benefit from stability,
security, and scalability.

> can anybody give me a decent reading list of howtos that focus on the 2nd
> ethernet card issue?

It is more of a LILO issue than anything else.  By default Linux (last I knew)
only polled for ethernet cards till it found ONE.  By specifying something like
eth0=x,x,x,x eth1=x,x,x,x ...  you can have it recognize multiple cards, and
which on is which. PCI with reports it's devices MIGHT recognize multiple cards
by default,  but then you still end up wondering which is eth0 and which is
eth1.  But if they have activity lights what should be pretty easy to figure
out.