# PCMCIA Ethernet Recommendations



## zephxiii (May 21, 2011)

I have three 3Comm NICs:

3C3SH573BT Double decker
3C3FE574BT Double decker

and

3CCSH572BT dongled

The FE D.D. caused problems in pfsense where the RRD graphs wouldn't work. The SH D.D. appeared to work better, but I'm randomly getting watchdog errors:

```
May 21 15:29:54 	apinger: alarm canceled: WANGW(192.168.2.1) *** down ***
May 21 15:29:54 	kernel: xl0: watchdog timeout
```
and it does seem like the connection is dropping. 

And I get a lot of errors in the error counter like 3616  in 21 hours.

The 3CCSH572BT works better than both, but still with errors but no connection drops that I know of, but I kind of hate the dongle.

Any ideas? Thanks. 

I think all three are working in some sort of older driver mode.

Either way I'm interested in a different NIC, preferably not 3comm that works with no problems. A double decker would be great if anyone knows of one.


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## wblock@ (May 22, 2011)

Just tried three old cards with an 8.2-Stable system.  All were detected, all showed initialization errors.  This was a Belkin F5D5010, a Netgear FA410, and a 3Com 3CXFE574BT ("XJACK", so no dongle).  It's possible there's something wrong with the card slot on that system, or something in software or BIOS should be set differently.  Although I have used at least a couple of these with FreeBSD on older notebooks in the past, the 3Com for sure.

Either way... have you considered a USB Ethernet adapter?  They're not quick, but the ones I've tried have worked.


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## zephxiii (May 23, 2011)

Which ones do you have? I may look into it.


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## wblock@ (May 24, 2011)

Sorry, I meant to dig out those USB adapters yesterday but just completely forgot.  Right now, I have an old Belkin F5D5050 10/100, and SMC 2202USB/ETH.  My impression was that the USB Ethernet drivers in FreeBSD cover most of the chipsets out there.  Should add that a system old enough to have a PC Card slot but not have built in Ethernet may only have USB 1 ports.  On those systems, the PC card should go much faster.


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## zephxiii (May 24, 2011)

Cool, I'll look into it, thanks.


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