10 Mbps and 100 Mbps ISA cards

["Miguel González Castaños" <mgc@tid.es>]

Dear all,

 I have a 486 working as a router using linux RedHat 7.3. It has two
3Com ISA cards, a Etherlink Fast 100 Mbps (driver 3c515) and Etherlink
III 10 Mbps (driver 3c509).

 The router is connected to a cable modem through the 10 Mbps ISA card
and the other one interfaces with a switch-hub to the LAN.

 I am considering if due to the limits of the bandwidth of the ISA bus
if it really is worth to have a 100 Mbps to the LAN interface in the
486. If I use that 100 Mbps ISA i.e. in a Pentium III the performance
would be similar to a PCI NIC?

 Apart from that I have two kernels, one the default kernel using
modules with RH 7.3 and a monolithic 2.4.22 compiled with the drivers.

 I am having problems to configure the parameters in the monolithic
kernel for using the two NICs in the /etc/lilo.conf because the system
detects the 3c509 card, but not the 3c515. What is funny is that If I
boot using modules, it uses isapnp, I cant make them work either, but if
I reboot to the monolithic kernel then It suddenly appears to detect the
3c515. If I shutdown and boot again the monolithic kernel, says that no
3c515 card found...I´m stumped.

 Anyway I dont know if the 3c515 is trying to use the wrong IRQ. When I
succeed to recognize the 3c515 card (using the trick of booting the
modular kernel first), it seems that IRQ 10 is fine, but uses the DMA 3
channel...Is this right? What I do it´s to set the IRQs and IO base
address in the /etc/lilo.conf file, but I am wondering if those settings
are right. I downloaded the configuration tools but I only get the IO
base address and the IRQ in the 3c509 card and only the base address in
the 3c515 card. Any hints?

 Many thanks in advance

 Miguel
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