Xref: utzoo comp.unix.xenix:9124 comp.unix.i386:1896 Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!philmtl!philabs!crpmks!garyb From: garyb@crpmks.UUCP (Gary Blumenstein) Newsgroups: comp.unix.xenix,comp.unix.i386 Subject: Re: Looking for smart serial ports for Unix Message-ID: <1101@crpmks.UUCP> Date: 20 Dec 89 17:20:46 GMT Reply-To: garyb@crpmks.UUCP (Gary Blumenstein) Organization: Ciba-Geigy Corporation Lines: 98 In article <1989Dec12.162639.26573@ddsw1.MCS.COM> you write: >In article <8912120109.AA17762@decwrl.dec.com> paine@fungus.dec.com (Willy Paine) writes: >> >>I am still looking for good multi-ports board for modem type terminal > >Digiboard IS good. One of the better ones. They are not cheap, but are >worth it. Not for my money. I'm sure the net has already heard about my positive experience with the Equinox Megaport boards. Once again, these discussions compell me to keep re-emphasizing this. If you buy DigibBoard, (or Arnet, Computone, Anvil, Specialix, Etc. for that matter) you are essentially buying the same OLD technology just served to us a different way. In my opinion, you LOSE in terms of price/performance, functionality, flexibility, expandability, ease of installation, and use. You will wind up with the same OLD problems. For example, you will be surprised when you find out that your $800 smart board can't run bi-directional UUCP w/ modem control. You will be dismayed to find out that you have to change standard terminal stty settings in order to accomodate the intelligent capabilities of some boards e.g. Intelliport TAB processing. Forget about the poor folks who don't even know what "stty" IS! You will be annoyed to find yourself constantly ordering PROM and driver upgrades, and you will be extra peeved when these so called upgrades (in some cases) actually DEGRADE the performance of your board! Sure, I can't wait to spend *my* hard earned money on this! I realize that I'm speaking in very general terms here but I'm coming from a position that empathizes with everyone who like myself, has already spent considerable time and money on intelligent i/o products, and has wound up less than satisfied. Once again, I will state that people who are shopping for smart boards are fortunate that they have a fresh, new alternative to consider. In my opinion, Equinox sets the quintessential performance and functionality standard that we have been demanding from the i/o board market for years, and have not been getting up until now. Now as far as DigiBoard is concerned, you will find much better price / performance with Equinox. Notice how DigiBoard didn't include Equinox in their latest ad campaign which shows graphs of the relative performance characteristics of several competitor's boards. DigiBoard might claim that Equinox is not yet considered a major competitor so therefore they had no reason to include them in the charts, but I think otherwise. Digiboard uses the same old commercial processor+UART design that been around for years. Theres no way they can hope to compete with custom designed ASIC technology and polling drivers that have been specifically designed and tuned to handle serial i/o. >Specialix is a new one for us, but very promising. The driver has a few >bugs in it, but nothing terrible that UUCP won't deal with. They also have >pledged to solve the problems -- more than many other companies have said >they would do (or have actually done)! I've heard several other board companies make pledges too. Why would the pledges coming from Specialix be any more convincing than pledges coming from say, Computone or Anvil? The fact that consumers have become conditioned to accept less than perfect functionality from these vendors is a shame. I realize that there are a good number of dedicated equipment vendors in the marketplace turning out novel products, and that some of these products are bound to have bugs, but I am sick and tired of paying thousands of dollars to play "field engineer" for these companies when I should be buying products that work out of the box, from day one. The intelligent I/O board market isn't exactly new anymore. Doesn't it seem ludicrous to buy expensive serial boards only to find that you have to run certain applications on your dumb port? (Note: this may not necessarily be true with UUCP on Specialix, as Karl seems to indicate.) Incidentally, I read Karl's earlier posting about the Specialix boards and considered using them before I went with Equinox. The 56K baud speed seemed attractive however, I after doing some research, I'm still convinced that Equinox is the superior board. (I will follow-up on this in a forthcoming article.) Karl, have you looked at Equinox yet? What are your thoughts? I havn't found any flaws with the Megaport boards and believe me, I've done my best to try to find something that wouldn't work on them. The board emulates the standard serial port so well that we had SL/IP running with SCO's TCP/ip and getting 1800cps with practically no overhead. Considering that SCO claims SL/IP will only work on the standard serial port is a good tribute to Equinox's functionality. Another thing, a friend of mine was able to install his Equinox board under SCO UNIX 3.2 and use the INTERACTIVE drivers with no problem whatsoever. If anyone wants datails on this, they can call me. What I like about the Equinox is that I can take it out of the box and plug it into my computer without messing around with switches or jumpers, install the drivers, plug in a standard 6 lead modular RJ11 cable to my Telebit (save yourself some time and use one of Equinox's RJ11<->DB25 adapters), enable getty and walk away. No hidden surprises, no field engineering required, no support hotline callbacks, no driver revisions, no ROM upgrades. It just works. Period. Disclaimer * * These are only my personal opinions, not Equinox's, and not my company's. -- Gary M. Blumenstein, UNIX Network Administrator // CIBA-GEIGY Corporation USA ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Phone (914) 347-4700 7 Skyline Drive, Hawthorne, NY 10532 FAX (914) 347-5687 UUCP ...uunet!philabs!crpmks!garyb