Add emulation of Realtek´s RTL810X/RTL8130/ RTL8139(A/B/C/D) network cards

[javier fernandez]

hello, i thing it would be useful to add support of this "simple" NIC. In particular, im collaborating with the ReactOS project, and i would want to be able to test these NICs inside VirtualBox :)

thanks for the attention!

[Michael Thayer]

Perhaps we could turn that round and suggest that you might like to contribute these NICs? Of course, emulating a piece of hardware is somewhat more tricky than writing a driver for it, because when you emulate it you need to emulate all features (or at least all that are used by an operating system you want to support).

[Frank Mehnert]

So ReactOS does really miss drivers for E1000 and for PCnet? The AMD PCnet hardware was quite common some years ago and this piece of hardware is simple as well...

[javier fernandez]

AMD PCnet NICs are working in ReactOS AFAIK no one has tested E1000 as of now... But a lot of NICs nowadays has the Realtek chipsets, or at least work with Realtek´s drivers.... I wish i could help you by coding those NICs, but im not developer...

[Frank Mehnert]

Actually it does not matter what chipset host has, it only matters which hardware the guest supports. If ReactOS has a PCnet driver then all is fine and there is no reason to start developing yet another ethernet device emulation.

[Olaf Siejka]

Frankly speaking, we are now supporting all NICs emulated by VBox. Adding NE2000 (RTL8029) and RTL8139 emulation functionality shouldn`t be hard, as this is already done in QEMU.

[Sander van Leeuwen]

It's not hard, but it takes some effort as a lot more than just changing makefiles. If you already support all VBox NICs, then why should we invest the time? I don't see the added value here. Just use the AMD or Intel drivers.

If you have a good reason to ask such support, then we are willing to think about it, but right now I don't see any.