[comp.sys.sun] Need help with high-speed serial I/O

ellery@trantor.harris-atd.com (Ellery Chan) (01/19/89)

I'm working on a project that needs a Sun (preferrably a 386i) with a
high-speed (300kbits/sec, SDLC) serial link to control some external
hardware.

We know of a serial card that plugs into the AT bus and uses DMA.  What we
don't know is whether we can control it from the Unix side, whether we can
use its DMA, and what amount of overhead we can expect to incur when
trying to talk to an AT bus device from Unix.

 1) Does anyone know of an SDLC card that will plug into the 386i's VME
    bus?
 2) Does anyone know whether it is feasible to support a reasonably high
    packet rate using the card that plugs into the AT bus?
 3) Does anyone have any actual experience doing this or something similar?

I'd appreciate any insights.  Thanks.

Ellery Chan, Advanced Technology Department
Harris Corp. (GSS), PO Box 37, MS 3A-1912, Melbourne, FL   32902
Phone: (407) 729-3364, ARPA: ellery@trantor.harris-atd.com