NEAT new USB NIC from Linksys!
Posted: Thu Feb 21, 2002 9:41 pm
It's TINY! My lappy has dead PCCard slots so I use a USB NIC. I used to use an older Linksys USB NIC that's fairly large (like nearly the size of a pack of cigarettes).
I had a client who needed a 2nd NIC on his server for DSL and we had no luck getting the POS onboard NIC to co-exist with a 3Com PCI NIC. the 3Com worked fine, but the onboard kept having an IRQ issue.
Time was short so I used my old USB NIC which worked fine.
So I ordered a new one to replace it and found out that Linksys has a new one that's 10/100 (it's only actually 12 Mbit - that's the max you can get on USB, but unlike my old one it'll work on a 100Mb hub).
It's faster than the old one which was 800Kbit, and it's TINY. It's smaller than a plastic Tic-Tac box with a neat hide-a-way pop-up RJ45 jack. Unlike my old one it can plug directly into the USB port without a cable, although it does come with a 6" extension cable.
Cheap too - I paid $55 for my old one 4 years back - this one was $25 from Outpost.
I may buy a couple more just to throw in my kit for rush-job network installations.
These are great when you need a 2nd NIC on a mobo that has IRQ issues. It uses the USB's IRQ so it generally has no conflict problems.
I had a client who needed a 2nd NIC on his server for DSL and we had no luck getting the POS onboard NIC to co-exist with a 3Com PCI NIC. the 3Com worked fine, but the onboard kept having an IRQ issue.
Time was short so I used my old USB NIC which worked fine.
So I ordered a new one to replace it and found out that Linksys has a new one that's 10/100 (it's only actually 12 Mbit - that's the max you can get on USB, but unlike my old one it'll work on a 100Mb hub).
It's faster than the old one which was 800Kbit, and it's TINY. It's smaller than a plastic Tic-Tac box with a neat hide-a-way pop-up RJ45 jack. Unlike my old one it can plug directly into the USB port without a cable, although it does come with a 6" extension cable.
Cheap too - I paid $55 for my old one 4 years back - this one was $25 from Outpost.
I may buy a couple more just to throw in my kit for rush-job network installations.
These are great when you need a 2nd NIC on a mobo that has IRQ issues. It uses the USB's IRQ so it generally has no conflict problems.
