On Tue, 31 Jan 2006 17:57:17 GMT, Rich Teer <rich.teer@rite-group.com> wrote:

> I'm thinking of upgrading my home network to GBE (currently it's
> 100 base T). Half of my important machines already have built GBE
> interfaces, but two of them don't so I need to get a couple of GBE
> NICs. If I had the $$$ I'd just get a pair of Sun Gigaswift UTPs,
> but I don't so I'm open to alternatives. Can anyone recommend a
> suitable NIC to me? The card MUST be supported by Solaris 10 (and
> preferably Solaris 9), and must support network booting. Support
> for SPARC is essential (the machines I'm looking at upgrading are
> a Sun Blade 1000 and an E220R); support for x86 is desirable but
> not mandatory.

Hello Rich,

While this does not meet your requirements exactly, I've picked up
several SysKonnect SK-9821 cards at a good price (less than $30/piece
off eBay) and they work well, support UTP, and are 64bit/66mhz. I'm
using them in several Enterprise x500 machines with the PCI I/O board.
I know the drivers work fine with Solaris 9 and 10, and they do
support x86 as well.

I don't see how you are going to find any card that has a Sun OBP to
support network booting on it that also is going to work in a x86 system
as I would think it would have to have different ROMs.

That said, I just boot the systems off the hme port when needed and use
the 9821s for everything else.

Brian