Network/Ethernet cards

[brando at uicsl.csl.uiuc.edu]

I obviously don't know of the experiences you have had with Ethernet cards and
other "add-ons", but from my experience in building quite a few 386/486 boxes,
I can tell you that the particular type of motherboard/BIOS combination can
many times yield an "uncompatiable" system.

For example: when I purchased my AMI motherboard and pieced together the rest
of the box, everything advertised was correct; yes the machine would run DOS.
After installing Interactive UNIX on the box, everything was less than 
operating. I started having fallouts (white lines across the screen) with my
older video card, tape drive and mouse driver problems running X, and the like.

I not "Joe Expert" on building 386 machines, nor am I qualified to call myself
an expert on installing Unix on those machines, but I can tell you that many
more factors affect a Unix box, than do a DOS machine. For one thing, I 
believe Unix is much more picky about interrupts. Newer versions of SCO and
Interactive I believe support shareable interrupts, but older versions did not.

Hope this helps a little so the airwaves weren't wasted...

Brandon