Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!swrinde!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!usc!samsung!sol.ctr.columbia.edu!bronze!greg From: greg@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu (Gregory R. TRAVIS) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.hardware Subject: Re: Serial Cards Message-ID: <1991Feb22.015548.21157@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu> Date: 22 Feb 91 01:55:48 GMT References: Organization: Indiana University Lines: 42 I just bought an ASDG dual serial board, which is nice but the performance is disappointing. It does not seem to perform as well as the internal Amiga serial port. This is an A2500HD/30 system. I bought it over the Commodore card because I could not get confirmation that the Commodore card would drop DTR when the device was closed, which I absolutely need. I did some timings with it. I found that while running a Zmodem download to my Amiga via VLT that it took Professional Page 36 seconds to load and become ready. Starting ProPage while performing the same download using the same comm software and using the Amiga built-in port only took 13 seconds. Both downloads were through a 9600 baud Courier HST modem. While the machine was unloaded in any other way, the Amiga port would average about 925 chars/sec while the ASDG port would do about 910 chars/sec. I don't think the difference is statistically valid though. I rebooted the machine in between these tests to get rid of any caching effects. Also, while more difficult to quantify, the ASDG board racked up more transfer errors than the Amiga internal port while I was doing things like moving workbench windows around. I am not using ASDG's SDB tool (which allows you to use their board even with exceptionally stupid software which has serial.device unit 0 hard-wired) and use VLT's device selection requestor. Still, the ASDG software seems to start up a task called SIOSBX-RA which runs at very high priority. Setting the priority of this non-CLI task to a reasonable number allowed ProPage to load in under 15 seconds but made the error rate on transfers go through the roof and the comm software gave up. Anyone know why ASDG needs this task to be running, even when not using the DOS Handlers they provide (i.e. by opening their version of "serial.device" directly)? Outbound (i.e. uploading) I could not get note any timing differences between the ASDG and the Amiga built in port. So, I guess it loads the system pretty heavily, even for a $300 board. I am using the latest (ver 1.5) ASDG driver software. Anyone got timings for the Commodore board under the same situations? I was NOT using the other ASDG port when I ran these tests.