Decent Article on the NE2000

[glitch]

link: http://www.os2museum.com/wp/was-the-ne2000-really-that-bad/

Pretty decent article on the history of the NE1000/NE2000, why they were done the way they were, and some historical context for them. I know some people like to hate on the NE2000 in particular

 

[Chuck(G)]

Most of my ISA NICs are NE2000-compatible. I'm very fond of them.

 

[NeXT]

So what I got from that was...the NE2000 is a solid ISA network adapter for operating systems that supported it out of the box (everything) but it got a reputation for being bad because the Linux crowd is a bunch of salty dweebs and suck at writing drivers and that mindset spread around unjustly to refer to the cards on the whole.

 

[glitch]

but it got a reputation for being bad because the Linux crowd is a bunch of salty dweebs and suck at writing drivers and that mindset spread around unjustly to refer to the cards on the whole.

That seems to be the suggestion. Personally, I never really experienced the NE2000 being hated on from Linux folks, just a "well it's an older slower ISA card, but *everything* supports it" kinda thing.

 

[the3dfxdude]

Seems like by the time the Linux folks were going around saying that it was around version 2.0 and PCI cards were everywhere, and based on what the article referenced (from no later than year 2000), they were saying creating clones of NE2000 by that point of time was a bad idea, because better designs were around.