THE ACER ALN-315C FAST ETHERNET ADAPTER
Last updated: 3/6/2001

The Acer ALN-315C is a low cost, bus-mastering, full-duplex, auto-sensing, Fast Ethernet adapter.

This board uses  the Intel 21143B PCI LAN Controller, a highly integrated 10/100Mbps Ethernet device designed for compliance with ACPI and OnNow requirements, to provide a low-cost, PCI, Fast Ethernet adapter for workstations and small file servers.

The User Guide is a bit skimpy, but better than many I've seen for low-end board products.  Software is provided on two floppy disks for NT, Novell, SCO Unix, Windows 3.1, Windows 95, and Windows 98, and includes FTP PC/TCP packet drivers.  A diagnostic program is included. Software installation for Windows 98 was very easy: plug-in the board, boot, insert drivers floppy #1 and the Windows 98 CD, and Windows does the rest.

The board complies with IEEE 802.3U, PCI 2.0, and ACPI 1.0 specifications.  32-bit Bus-mastering, full-duplex, and auto-sensing are supported.  The NIC has 100 Mhz, Link, Activity, and Power-down LEDs.  It includes a lifetime warranty from a major manufacturer.  For the price, this is a good quality board with good lay-out and plenty of capacitors.  The ALN-315 version of the board has a Wake-On-LAN (WOL) connecotr and cable which enables the computer to be remote powered-on and managed; this version of the board does not.   Packaging is quite good.  Once installed, I had no problems with the board. 

Larry