art@sage.acc.com (05/13/89)
>In passing, please note that the Amiga does not violate standards more >than the average RS232 interface. It simply omits the slew rate limiting >capacitors on the RS232 drivers, just like 30-70% of the other RS232 >"compatible" devices out there. And of course the baud rate generator can >be set to some interesting values. > >Yes, reliablity in a general sense does suffer. Depending on the FCC >treatment in the particular unit and the cable length, it may or may not >go that fast. No promises... > >Really there's no great problem with 38.4K local/direct connections, >but sadly, a lot of the common things like terminals, terminal programs >and dumb protocols can't seem to keep up. The world is overfull of >terminals that won't display as fast at 9600 BPS without flow control >no matter how fast you set the bit rate to. This discussion has nothing to do with TCP, but I imagine it's of some interest to the readership. We have run RS-232 up to over 200Kbps IN THE LAB, but the real world of connecting everything together can be MUCH LESS FORGIVING. As a person who has fought with the crosstalk that high slew rates can generate in some cabling, I fully appreciate the need for slew rate control. 26 conductor flat ribbon cable (used with press-on connectors) is very popular and very susceptible to crosstalk. Other cabling can range from poor to very good. If you are going to violate the specs, know exactly what you are doing, (i.e. know something about the transmission line characteristics) and don't be suprised if you still get bit. There is nothing quite as aggravating as something that ALMOST always works. +-----------------------------------------------------------------------+ | Art Berggreen Advanced Computer Communications | | <art@sage.acc.com> Santa Barbara Street | | (805)963-9431 Santa Barbara, CA 93101 | +-----------------------------------------------------------------------+