Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!ames!pasteur!ucbvax!VAX.FTP.COM!jbvb From: jbvb@VAX.FTP.COM (James Van Bokkelen) Newsgroups: comp.protocols.tcp-ip.ibmpc Subject: Re: Western Digital board Message-ID: <8805110429.AA03980@vax.ftp.com> Date: 11 May 88 04:29:24 GMT References: <21523@amdcad.AMD.COM> Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU Organization: The Internet Lines: 12 In my experience, shared memory is a *lot* faster than DMA on an AT. The five fastest boards we support all use shared memory. Of course, Excelan uses shared memory, too, but the classic problem with outboard protocol implementations is that they are complicated to talk to. This is likely to eat up all the gains from using two processors, and then some. W-D does have a slight edge on some other cards, in that their shared memory address is set by software: only the interrupt vector and I/O address are set via jumpers. With PC/TCP, the WD8003 is right up there with Interlan's NI5210 and 3Com's 3C523 (Etherlink-MC) for speed. James VanBokkelen FTP Software Inc.