Related Articles

Linksys LNE100 TX

The Linksys LNE100 TX

Again, this card is very similar to the NC100 – the biggest difference between the NC 100 and the LNE 100TX is the WOL and Boot-Rom support. Coming in just a few dollars more (average price of $19.99) this card packs a lot of value in a small, easy to use and install card.

As with the NC100, the LNE 100 TX card also gives you a very comprehensive manual, and some quick start guides for easy installation. They also include a cable for connecting the LAN card to your system board for WOL support, and 2 drivers disks on floppy.

The LNE 100TX has a couple of additional LED indicators that the NC100 does not. In addition to the Link and Activity LEDs, there are also 100Mbit connection, and full duplex mode lights. The way I see it is: the more diagnostic lights the merrier!

Installation of this NIC was painless and simple. The LNE 100 TX card includes the same DIAG utility that came with the NC100.

There are some differences worth noting between the NC 100 and the LNE 100TX. First and most obvious are the WOL and Boot-Rom support, which are valuable features, for those who know they will make use of them. The extra lights included on the back of the card shouldn’t be overlooked either… with my experience –any extra diagnostic tools can come in handy when you are trying to gather link and troubleshooting information on the card.

Here are the performance scores for the LNE 100 TX using driver release as of 8/99

Time to transfer files: 2:48
Network utilization: 18%
Frames /sec: 4621-12383
Frames dropped:0
CPU utilization: 72%

I didn’t see a real performance increase here over the NC100, and again the only true benefit you will gain is the WOL and Boot-ROM support.

send article   hardware newsletter   article comments (6)

Submit our article to: Digg this! del.icio.us