The idea that the current crop of ISA-compatible near-single-chip ethernet
controllers (or the supply thereof) will dissappear with the declining
popularity of ISA in PC-compatible computers is a bit ... disturbing.  I
assume that the the (more widely (than PCs) deployed PCI-based controllers
would be near-impossible for a PIC to talk to?  Of course, if embedded
systems start using realtek (or equivilent) ethernet controllers in
reasonable volumes, the dissappearence of the ISA market might be less of a
worry.

On the other hand, a lot of processor vendors are starting to consider
the possibility of putting ethernet controllers withing their larger
microcontrollers (Motarola does this with 68k and PPC cores already - I
talked to a few other vendors that were thinking about it at ESC.
(They're rather annoyed that there seems to be a clear MARKETING
requirement to implement a 10/100 capable controller concurrently with
equally clear LACK of an ENGINEERING requirement for 100Mbps.)

On the third hand, the realtek (and presumably others) is presumably "just
an asic" - it's conceivable that "they" could re-spin the back end of the
async to replace the ISA interface with something even MORE compatible
with embedded microcontrollers (I2C?)  Hmm...

BillW

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