digicube wrote on 2021-01-13, 10:29:

GA622T is PCI-X. Will it work in a PCI slot?

Looking at https://www.amazon.co.uk/Netgear-GA622T-Coppe … t/dp/B00006B9GW it may not even physically fit into your PCI slot

I thought PCI-X is backwards compatible with PCI?

digicube wrote on 2021-01-13, 19:09:

I thought PCI-X is backwards compatible with PCI?

It is provided there are no motherboard components in the way, which motherboard do you have?

Asus P2B-D

digicube wrote on 2021-01-13, 19:56:

Asus P2B-D

I don't have an ASUS P2B-D, so can't check. Looking at an image the three next to the ISA slots look to be OK, but one one next to the AGP slot may be a problem

Has Win9x drivers that may work under Win95.. not 100% sure though.
https://www.amazon.com/StarTech-com-Gigabit-E … 2/dp/B0000TO0BQ

IMHO, Windows 9x network performance is rather craptastic .

See Re: Pentium III + Windows 98, Slow network transfers and previous posts .

You may have better luck than I did, but I think it's barely worth it (2x faster than 100Mbps) and that was on a 1400MHz Tualatin 512K with an SSD . On a lower specced machine, with a slower hard disk, you will likely hit other bottlenecks .

Good luck.

wiretap wrote on 2021-01-13, 20:28:

Has Win9x drivers that may work under Win95.. not 100% sure though.
https://www.amazon.com/StarTech-com-Gigabit-E … 2/dp/B0000TO0BQ

@digicube

do yourself a favor, and just use a 3com or intel 10/100 pci network card.

The data transfer is going to be hard-drive bound, and even with a end-stage P3 cpu and SSD, the pci bus will be your next bottleneck and you will still not get much more than 500mbps.

I say 3com/intel because of the mature, well documented drivers. To say nothing about their low cost and easy availibility.

I have a 3COM 100Mbps PCI card, will install it but 500mbps sounds much faster than 100mbps. Even 200mbps will be worth it to get a gigabit card cuz it's twice as fast.

digicube wrote on 2021-01-13, 22:25:

I have a 3COM 100Mbps PCI card, will install it but 500mbps sounds much faster than 100mbps. Even 200mbps will be worth it to get a gigabit card cuz it's twice as fast.

What CPU will you be using ?
Let us know how things go , performance wise on your setup .

Dual P2 266MHz, 256MB RAM, Win95 on Compact Flash. I purchased RTL8169SC(L) on ebay and Win98SE won't even detect the card, so I doubt that Startech card which uses a similar chipset will work on Win95.

Dual P2 266MHz, Win95

not to shit in your punchbowl, but I feel like I should ask; are you aware windows 95 cannot make use of a 2nd cpu, and its literally just sitting there making heat?

Nice to know that but the PC is also for Win98SE and hopefully NT4 in the future. Maybe DOS too.

digicube wrote on 2021-01-13, 23:25:

Dual P2 266MHz, 256MB RAM, Win95 on Compact Flash. I purchased RTL8169SC(L) on ebay and Win98SE won't even detect the card, so I doubt that Startech card which uses a similar chipset will work on Win95.

I strongly doubt you will get even 100Mbps throughput in Windows 95 or 98 out of a 266MHz Pentium 2 . See http://www.sfu.ca/~siegert/nic-test.html for some old benchmarks under Linux .

EDIT: Even if it won't support it, Windows 9x should still detect a PCI device. Otherwise there in a hardware incompatibility or the device is defective .

The idea is to have fastest transfer speed possible, so a gigabit card will definitely be faster than a 100mbps card even if I can't reach 100mbps.

digicube wrote on 2021-01-14, 02:58:

The idea is to have fastest transfer speed possible, so a gigabit card will definitely be faster than a 100mbps card even if I can't reach 100mbps.

If the CPU is bottlenecking a 100Mbps card, a 1000Mbps one is unlikely to be any faster .

That said, here is another set of benchmarks, again under Linux, run on a Pentium 3 500E machine : Why are 3Com NICs in such high regard? that may be slightly more encouraging in regards to your use case, though your P2 266, will have about half the clock speed and only two thirds the FSB bandwidth of the machine tested here .

In the end, the NICs are cheap enough that you might as well try both 100Mbps an 1000Mbps and determine for yourself how fast they are in relative and absolute terms . Please let us know if you do run those tests .

Cheers!

digicube wrote on 2021-01-14, 02:05:

Nice to know that but the PC is also for Win98SE and hopefully NT4 in the future. Maybe DOS too.

Of those you named, only NT4 can handle symmetric multiprocessing. Win9x and DOS are not capable of using more than 1 CPU.

digicube wrote on 2021-01-14, 02:58:

The idea is to have fastest transfer speed possible, so a gigabit card will definitely be faster than a 100mbps card even if I can't reach 100mbps.

and i'm out.