Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att-cb!att-ih!pacbell!ames!umd5!uvaarpa!mcnc!decvax!mandrill!neoucom!wtm
From: wtm@neoucom.UUCP (Bill Mayhew)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: multiple RS232 ports
Summary: Check out Arnet multiport board
Message-ID: <1111@neoucom.UUCP>
Date: 17 Apr 88 02:42:31 GMT
References: <3850@medusa.cs.purdue.edu>
Organization: Northeastern Ohio Universities College of Medicine
Lines: 20


<<what to do about multiple RS232 ports on an XT?>>

	AT least two aftermarket products come to mind:  Arnet and
Digiboard.  I think that Digiboard has the edge on quality, while
it may easer to get Arnet products, since Radio Shark is one of
their distributors.

	The boards use a slave 80188 CPU tightly coupled to 16450
ACIA chips.  The 80188 then blops the stuff to the PC via a DMA
channel.  The board can emulate a COM: port without special driver
software.  To get the most out of it, you need to run a device
driver to support the DMA under DOS.  Both of the above boards are
supplied with Xenix drivers.

	There are a lot of other comapnies that make similar
products, these are just two that I have happened to use (with an
older Compaq 386 and Xenix, that is).

--Bill