[comp.sys.ibm.pc] Serial Boards for UNIX?

dlu@wobble.UUCP (Doug Urner) (11/07/88)

I'm trying to select a multi-port serial card for my '386 machine.  One
of the board's major responsibilities will be to handle uucp trafic
through a high speed modem I am assuming that it will have to be a
"smart" board.

The OS is Interactive's 386/ix.

I have more or less narrowed my search to these three boards, but I am
open to other ideas.

    Anvil "Stallion" 8 port

	They claim to have implemented the tty driver on the board so
	that all serial i/o can be off loaded to the board.  This might
	be great but it also makes me a little nervous about the amount
	of finger pointing that could get involved with keeping the
	drivers in sync.  I also assume that I will have to keep two
	drivers around if I want any other serial boards on the
	system.

    Arnet "Smartport" 8 port

	This one did real well in "Infoworld's" benchmarks.  They also
	offer a "lifetime" (of the machine (or company, whichever comes
	first :-)) warranty.  Interactive supports this board.

    Dastra "MCIO/16" 8 port

	 This one also claims to have UNIX/XENIX specific support, but
	 I haven't been able to get much information about what exactly
	 it is that they do to support UNIX...

All of the benchmark reports that I have found in trade rags only report
on one of the above, so they are hard to compare.

I would appreciate any information that you care to share about these
boards.

Thanks in advance,

Doug Urner  uunet!wobble!dlu  206/676-5759