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From: caf@omen.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.unix.xenix
Subject: Re: Intellegent multi-port serial line card for Xenix...
Message-ID: <509@omen.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 4-Apr-87 18:51:26 EST
Article-I.D.: omen.509
Posted: Sat Apr  4 18:51:26 1987
Date-Received: Sun, 5-Apr-87 14:57:55 EST
References: <1459@cadovax.UUCP>
Reply-To: caf@omen.UUCP (PUT YOUR NAME HERE)
Distribution: world
Organization: Omen Technology Inc, Portland Oregon
Lines: 27

A caveat for any intelligent serial interface is the issue of drivers
for the particular flavor of *nix you wish to run.

I'm running a very dumb 4 port card here, plus the serial port built
into the Intel 386 motherboard.  The board is directly supported by the
stock 2.2 Xenix kernel, and can take input from Compuserve Information
Service (using Pro-YAM, natch.) at 2400 bps without much load on the
system.  During one such session, I was also downloading a file to a PC
at 19200 bps and got a throughput of about 18200 bps.  How much of the
machine was left with those two ports running I don't know, but I don't
seem to notice much difference on most tasks.  A large make takes
longer, but then I usually run such things in the background anyway.
The big hogs are netnews unbatching, ditroff, and cc.  I don't even
notice if uucp is running unless I try to access the phone line when it
is busy.

The one advantage of a dumb card is cost, less than $200 for the 4-port
I'm using.  They're all obsolete anyway, most won't handle ISDN, X.25,
et al so why worry?


Chuck Forsberg WA7KGX Author of Pro-YAM communications Tools for PCDOS and Unix
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