Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!rutgers!cmcl2!ccnysci!alexis
From: alexis@ccnysci.UUCP (Alexis Rosen)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: Additional serial ports for MacII?
Keywords: serial ports, MacII
Message-ID: <1448@ccnysci.UUCP>
Date: 24 Mar 89 19:07:40 GMT
References: <520@umiami.miami.edu> <46100292@uxe.cso.uiuc.edu> <213@suna.CMI.COM>
Reply-To: alexis@ccnysci.UUCP (Alexis Rosen)
Organization: City College of New York
Lines: 43

In article <213@suna.CMI.COM> dave@suna.cmi.com.UUCP (David Halonen) writes:
>I'm looking for a manufacturer of additional serial ports for the
>MacII.  Any leads out there?
>

I waited for Paul to answer this, but he hasn't so...

Paul Cambell built a four-port serial board for the Mac. It is currently
available for A/UX and will be available for the Mac OS shortly (but I seem
to recall that you can buy the A/UX version and then get the Beta Mac OS
drivers on demand).

While I don't own one yet (I will soon), I have talked to a lot of people
about them, and I have used one on an A/UX machine. The consensus is that
this is a really excellent piece of work all around.

The board works as either four serial ports or one AppleTalk port. It is
buffered so it removes much of the load from the CPU when it runs as an
AppleTalk port. It also understands various communications protocals (such
as uucp 'g') so it makes serial communication a lot nicer (Telebits running
UUCP at full speed under A/UX have a virtually imperceptible impact on
performance).  There's more, but I don't remember all of it.

The board lists for $600. It is currently sold by SuperMac, but that may
change in the near future.


There are also a number of other manufacturers who make serial cards:
CSI- They make the "Hurdler" NuBus prototyping card and MacForth. I don't know
     anything about their serial card, except that as of two months ago it
     would not run with A/UX. The four-port card is cheap ( <$300, I think).
AST- They make the "ICP" two- or four-port card. This is a more powerful card
     than Paul's CommCard, in some ways (68000 @10MHz, I think) but the
     performance is much poorer. Also, the card is more expensive (about
     $1000). I don't believe it supports A/UX. (I'm very uncertain about this,
     but I seem to recall that this card is based on Apple's Coprocessor Card.)
Dove- They make a variety of interface boards with varying quantities and
     types of interfaces (422, 423, 232, parallel, others). I don't know
     anything about these boards.


Alexis Rosen
alexis@ccnysci.{uucp,bitnet}