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Linksys NC100v2.0

Linksys currently offers the NC100 and the LNE 100TX NICs. These cards are much like the CNet cards, with one card offering basic features with a smaller price tag, and the other offering more advanced features with a slightly larger price tag.

Starting with the NC 100

This is the more basic of the two cards. Here’s what is included –

The Linksys NC 100

Complete Windows support for ALL flavors including Windows 9x, NT, 2000. An excellent and very comprehensive manual, and of course a drivers disk on floppy. The NC 100 also has two status lights on the back –one shows NIC activity and the other shows 100Mbit/s link status –all with an average price tag of $18.

I found the installation of the NC 100 card to be very simple. Linksys does include a small utility on the drivers disk called NCDIAG, which only runs in a DOS screen and allows you to test the cards configuration, bandwidth, loop back, or register. It also allows you to view the MAC address of the card (which WINIPCFG also does in Windows) and it’s nice to have this utility included from the manufacture in case you encounter problems that require the extra diagnostic tools it provides.

Most people will like the manual and easy setup guides -Linksys really went to some effort to make sure you feel comfortable installing and configuring their cards by including an easy to read and understand setup and install guide.

As already stated, the card is fully supported in all flavors of Windows, including Windows 3.1, 9x, NT, and 2000. But something worth mentioning here –is a read me file on the driver floppy stating “technical support is only provided for Windows 95, 98, 2000* and Windows NT 4.0. Instructions for any other operating systems may be found on this diskette using the Readme.exe program. Setup and troubleshooting is the sole responsibility of the user.”

At least that leaves the door open for people who DO want to use this card in a different OS, such as Linux.

Here are the scores for the NC 100 NIC using the latest driver version 2.2

Time to transfer files: 2:50
Network utilization: 18%
Frames /sec: 4413-11163
Frames dropped:0
CPU utilization: 75%

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