john@wa3wbu.UUCP (John Gayman) (02/14/88)
I am in need of an intelligent serial card for my AT running
2.3U Microport. I am currently using an 8-port Digiboard (dumb) but it
just can't quite hack running the Telebit Trailblazer at 9600 and doing
other things with the serial ports. However, it seems to run the Telebit
by itself ok. I pretty much prefer either the Digiboard or Bell
Technologies intelligent cards. Can anyone give me any details on which
of these works better with Microport ?
To further cause me some concern, I understand that Bell supplies
a driver for Microport 2.3 in the form of an "installit". This installit
builds you a kernel with drivers inserted for their intelligent card,
tape drive and dumb card. This could be a problem because I already have
my kernel regenerated for use with the Everex tape drive.
Does the Bell tech and Everex tape drives use different major/minor
device numbers and would having both hurt me ? The other possibility is
that I can hack the installit procedure to omit the installation of
the tape and dumb-serial drivers.
I need to know if their are known problems with either of these cards
with Microport. The Digiboard Im currently using integrated rather
smoothly. I havn't seen much feedback on either board and really dont
relish the thought of investing major bucks into a board that will cause
me greif once installed. Any information, suggestions or tips are
appreciated.
John
--
John Gayman, WA3WBU | UUCP: uunet!wa3wbu!john
1869 Valley Rd. | ARPA: wa3wbu!john@uunet.UU.NET
Marysville, PA 17053 | Packet: WA3WBU @ AK3P ptrubey@sce.UUCP (Phil Trubey) (02/22/88)
I have used the Digiboard intelligent card (com 8/i) with Microport 2.2.2U. In a nutshell, I was not impressed. The card came with linkable device drivers that you could configure to use whatever interrupt and memory address space you wanted. The driver, however, had bugs. It would not operate reliably at 9600 baud. After some informal tests, I actually found that the dumb board had better throughput than the smart board! This was at 2400 baud speeds, running several ports simultaneously. Also, just getting the proper driver from Digiboard was not easy. Twice they sent me drivers for SCO Xenix, and when they finally sent me one for Microport, it was an older, buggy version. The newer one wasn't much better, though. After much fooling around, we decided to junk the intelligent board and get their dumb board. It works. Note that this experience happened about 4 months ago, and was with Microport 2.2.2U. Hope this helps, Phil Trubey School of Computer Science, Carleton University CDNnet: ptrubey@sce.carleton.cdn BITNET: ptrubey@carleton UUCP: ptrubey@sce (..!watmath!clan!ptrubey or !watmath!sce!ptrubey)