Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83; site ut-ngp.UUCP
Path: utzoo!linus!philabs!seismo!ut-sally!ut-ngp!lee
From: lee@ut-ngp.UUCP (William L. Lee III)
Newsgroups: net.dcom
Subject: Re: vax rs232 port info wanted
Message-ID: <143@ut-ngp.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 28-Nov-83 13:27:41 EST
Article-I.D.: ut-ngp.143
Posted: Mon Nov 28 13:27:41 1983
Date-Received: Tue, 29-Nov-83 05:41:07 EST
References: <632@cbosgd.UUCP>
Organization: Comp. Center, Univ. of Texas at Austin
Lines: 18

First off, don't buy a DMF-32. It's a lousy piece of hardware. And for a
related reason, you probably don't want to buy a DMF-32 emulator. Able
makes a nice one (VMF/32) that has 16 ports with full modem control on
a single card. You can turn DMA on or leave it off. It looks like two
DMF-32's (if you use a DMF-32 driver). The problem is, since the DEC DMF-32
is so lousy, there isn't a good driver for it. We have 4 or 5 different
ones and they all have serious deficiencies. For instance, if we try to
turn on DMA, we crash. If we try to use the select(2) system call on a DMF
port, we crash (we have been without "telnet" since we switched to 4.1c.
Fortunately, we have rlogin). There are several other "little" problems.
Yes, I know that it can't be that hard to write a decent driver for an
async mux, but we are also wrestling with drivers for UDA50's, HSC50's,
KMC-11's, and some other "standard" DEC products that don't work too well
with 4.1c/4.2.

*** NOTE: If anyone does have a DMF-32 driver (or Able VMZ-32 or Able 
VMZ-32/LP) that works (i.e. runs DMA and works with select(2)), PLEASE
send me a copy.