Newsgroups: ont.uucp
Path: utzoo!henry
From: henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: Cruddy peripherals (was Re: Is it time for a "uunet-north"?)
Message-ID: <1990Feb7.175545.24836@utzoo.uucp>
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology
References: <90Feb5.222929est.827@church.csri.toronto.edu> <1990Feb6.171326.15603@utzoo.uucp> <387@sickkids.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 7 Feb 90 17:55:45 GMT

In article <387@sickkids.UUCP> mark@sickkids.UUCP (Mark Bartelt) writes:
>> I'm still disgusted that a 3/180 can't run a 2400-baud uucp line at full
>> speed -- the 44 could.)
>
>Gack!  That's truly appalling.  (I've never had to deal with Suns, and
>wasn't aware how awful their serial I/O stuff was.)

I think it's a combination of a dumb multiplexor and a dumb driver.  Sun
believes in workstations and Ethernets and doesn't believe in timesharing
and serial lines, so the mux driver didn't get a lot of attention.  Of
course, even a workstation occasionally has to talk to someone serially,
which is why most Suns have a pair of serial ports on the CPU board...
and although the hardware behind those ports is even simpler than that
on the mux board, the *driver* has been carefully and painstakingly greased
up and *those* ports run very well at high speeds.
-- 
SVR4:  every feature you ever |     Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
wanted, and plenty you didn't.| uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry henry@zoo.toronto.edu