[ale] DFE-530TX+ Rev D - Beware!

[Joseph A. Knapka]

Regarding the D-Link NICs mentioned in the subject, which are
being sold as a loss-leader by Circuit City for literal pennies:

- The box claims Linux support.
- There's a version of Donald Becker's rtl8139 driver on the
  driver diskette.
- That driver *will not* compile under 2.4-series kernels.
- The rtl8139 driver (drivers/net/8139too.c) included in
  the 2.4.5 kernel *will not* detect this card.

In summary, if you're running a modern kernel, *don't* take
advantage of this deal. I intend to boot a 2.2 kernel later
today and try it there.

These would be the ones in the blue boxes. The ones in
black boxes are probably Rev C cards, which work great
under 2.2 and 2.4 kernels.

The real bummer is, they've removed support for OS/2 as well,
which means the OS/2 box I swiped an old 530TX out of to
replace the one in my firewall that got fried in a
t-storm Monday night, now doesn't have a usable network
card at all :-(

-- Joe Knapka
"You know how many remote castles there are along the gorges? You
 can't MOVE for remote castles!" -- Lu Tze re. Uberwald
// Linux MM Documentation in progress:
// http://home.earthlink.net/~jknapka/linux-mm/vmoutline.html
2nd Lbl A + 1 = 2nd Pause 2nd Prt GTO 2 R/S
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