steve@cdp.UUCP (06/10/88)
Does anyone have any experience with the Chase AT4, AT8, or AT16 Intelligent
Serial I/O Controllers for V/386 on the AT bus ? The board is distributed by
Monolithic Systems and Microway, but is made by Specialix Systems Ltd. in the
UK.
We bought a 16 port board (AT16) for our Everex 386/20, running Microport
UNIX, and have been unable to make the thing work. At boot time, we get the
message :
Chase Serial I/O driver V3.06 DMA channel 5 active. Card not installed
I have checked for conflicting DMA channels, and improperly installed jumpers.
Also, I have been in contact with John Pettitt, who designed the board. He
suggested that our AT may have non-standard termination of the DMA channel,
and gave me info on how to hack the at16 to compensate. But still, it doesn't
boot.
So, if anyone has experience or advice on bringing up the AT16/8/4, could you
please E-Mail me at the below address.
Thank you,
Steven Fram
Community Data Processing (CdP)
1944C University
East Palo Alto, CA 94303
415-322-9069
UUCP : {hplabs, pyramid, uunet, ...}!cdp!steve
Internet : parcvax.xerox.com!cdp!stevedirk@altger.UUCP (dirk) (06/18/88)
I know about the problem with the CHASE serial boards. I have had a CHASE AT8 for about 5 month. Within this time nobody was able to get it run under the MircoPort or Interactive UNIX ond the iPAX386. I always got the same message "Card is not installed" or "Card is not responding". You should note that there is a new driver on the market 3.09 I got from Specialix, but it does not work as well. I tried out all kind of Interrupt and DMA jumper combinations, but this did not help. The failure must be in the device driver NOT in any kind of hardware or clock-rate due I ran the board under XENIX-286 on the same machine. Even there it was not running as well as I wanted to have it. I noticed that the AT8 does not even have modem control lines. The best way is to send back the board to Sphinx. I now have an Computone board (Intelliport 16) it is priced at about $1000 with 16 ports. For the CHASE AT8 they wanted to charge me $1300 ! The Computone is very very good. It has LEDs and jumpers for standalone diagnostics, 128-256 KRAM, an iAPX186@10MHz on board and a i8031 inside an external box. The hardware wiring is done much better due to an outside box. Your can program any port for modem control and best off all is the device driver. The driver is able to allow two virtuell terminals on each serial port also you can setup an exchange table for each function key, replace character sets and setup control-sequenzes for your printer and and and... All I keep from the CHASE AT8 are the expensive long-distance calls to Sphinx or Specialix and the unreliable support over there. cu, dirk :-)