Clones of popular Ethernet cards.

# 4. Clones of popular Ethernet cards.

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Due to the popular design of some cards, different companies will make `clones' or replicas of the original card. However, one must be careful, as some of these clones are not 100 % compatible, and can be troublesome. Some common problems with `not-quite-clones' are noted in the FAQ section .

This section used to have a listing of a whole bunch of clones that were reported to work, but seeing as nearly all clones will work, it makes more sense to list the ones that don't work 100 % .

## 4.1 Poor NE2000 Clones

Here is a list of some of the NE-2000 clones that are known to have various problems. Most of them aren't fatal. In the case of the ones listed as `bad clones' -- this usually indicates that the cards don't have the two NE2000 identifier bytes. NEx000-clones have a Station Address PROM (SAPROM) in the packet buffer memory space. NE2000 clones have `0x57,0x57` in bytes `0x0e,0x0f` of the SAPROM, while other supposed NE2000 clones must be detected by their SA prefix.

Accton NE2000 -- might not get detected at boot, see ne2000 problems .

Aritsoft LANtastic AE-2 -- OK, but has flawed error-reporting registers.

AT-LAN-TEC NE2000 -- clone uses Winbond chip that traps SCSI drivers

ShineNet LCS-8634 -- clone uses Winbond chip that traps SCSI drivers

Cabletron E10**, E20**, E10**-x, E20**-x -- bad clones, but the driver checks for them. See E10** .

D-Link Ethernet II -- bad clones, but the driver checks for them. See DE-100 / DE-200 .

DFI DFINET-300, DFINET-400 -- bad clones, but the driver checks for them. See DFI-300 / DFI-400

## 4.2 Poor WD8013 Clones

I haven't heard of any bad clones of these cards, except perhaps for some chamelion-type cards that can be set to look like a ne2000 card or a wd8013 card. There is really no need to purchase one of these `double-identity' cards anyway.

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