Activate wm(4) on NetBSD under ESXi

       92 words, 1 minutes

A VMware ESXi virtual machine running NetBSD gets a network card in compatibility mode:

pcn0 at pci0 dev 17 function 0: AMD PCnet-PCI Ethernet  
pcn0: Am79c970A PCnet-PCI II rev 0, Ethernet address 00:0c:29:0a:24:b3  
pcn0: VMware Tx segment count bug detected  
pcn0: interrupting at ioapic0 pin 18  
pcn0: 10base5, 10base5-FDX, 10baseT, 10baseT-FDX, auto, auto-FDX

To get better performance, you can emulate an Intel Gigabit NIC. You have to modify the vitual machine configuration file (.vmxfile). Just add:

Ethernet0.virtualDev = "e1000"

You will then get a Intel i82545EM 1000BASE-T (wm0) which is far better.