rshaw@theborg.mlb.fl.us (Ron) (02/16/91)
Anyone had any experience with the various serial cards?
The Commodore, ASDG or Serial Solutions?
I was considering opening up another node to a Programmers bbs, but wanted to
get a serial card that has hardware registers and ports that can be confgured
seperately. I wanted to run a 38.4K baud node & maybe a 14.4 and or 2400
baud. along with my midi. Any suggestions?
I was at first considering purchasing the Supra internal modem, but received
no positive feedback on the unit what soever. THen I got a little feed back
on the asdg serial card, something to the effect that the CBm internal
serial.device driver was better. and on the Serial Solutions I got input
stating it had hardware registers. I have been going thru my Amazing Amiga's
and Amiga worlds to see if there has ever been an article on the various
serial cards available to no avail. will probably call Don Hicks (amazing
amiga) Monday and see if he has any feedback to offer. But as of now I have no
idea or the number of ports each unit has, or can they be set independently of
each other and any restrictions. Any feedback is certainly appreciated.
Ron Shaw..... The only good 8 bit computer is a
Dead 8 bit compter....
-----------------------------Mathematics is a state of mind,
Electronics is a state of being.darrell@comspec.uucp (Darrell Grainger) (02/20/91)
I have looked at the ASDG dual serial card and have talked to the people at Commodore Canada about their serial card. Both appear to be comparible to the serial port on the motherboard but lack one important thing. From what I could tell they are all DB9 serial ports. This tends to mean that some of the lines necessary for hardware handshaking are missing. For the USRobotics HST 14400 I would expect you to need the following lines: 2 TxD Transmit Data 3 RxD Received Data 4 RTS Request To Send 5 CTS Clear To Send 6 DSR Data Set Ready 7 GND Signal Ground 8 CD Carrier Detect 12 SI Speed Indicator 20 DTR Data Terminal Ready 22 RI Ring Indicator If all but the SI line was support it would be okay. In addition to the chance of one or more of these lines missing, Commodore Canada and the ASDG literature indicated that 19200 bps was all they would recommend these boards for. The 14400 HST should be set for a terminal to modem speed of 38400. Is anyone at Commodore US reading this? Can you give me a little more confidence in you serial board? Darrell Grainger Disclaimer: The above is my personal opinions and do not necessarily reflect those of my employer.
cg@ami-cg.UUCP (Chris Gray) (02/22/91)
In article <1991Feb19.225431.17057@comspec.uucp> darrell@comspec.uucp (Darrell Grainger) writes: > I have looked at the ASDG dual serial card and have talked to the people at >Commodore Canada about their serial card. > > Both appear to be comparible to the serial port on the motherboard but lack >one important thing. From what I could tell they are all DB9 serial ports. >This tends to mean that some of the lines necessary for hardware handshaking >are missing. > > For the USRobotics HST 14400 I would expect you to need the following lines: > > 2 TxD Transmit Data > 3 RxD Received Data > 4 RTS Request To Send > 5 CTS Clear To Send > 6 DSR Data Set Ready > 7 GND Signal Ground > 8 CD Carrier Detect >12 SI Speed Indicator >20 DTR Data Terminal Ready >22 RI Ring Indicator > > If all but the SI line was support it would be okay. > > In addition to the chance of one or more of these lines missing, Commodore >Canada and the ASDG literature indicated that 19200 bps was all they would >recommend these boards for. The 14400 HST should be set for a terminal to >modem speed of 38400. > > Is anyone at Commodore US reading this? Can you give me a little more >confidence in you serial board? Well, the ASDG board should do the trick then. From their documentation, here is the pinout: 1 - DCD 2 - RXD 3 - TXD 4 - DTR 5 - GND 6 - DSR 7 - RTS 8 - CTS 9 - RI (I was just building a cable this afternoon, so I had it handy :-) ) Also, the data rate list contains: 110, 300, 1200, 2400, 4800, 9600, 19200, 31250(MIDI), 38400, 57600, 76800. I haven't really stressed it much (1200 baud modem on one port, 19200 bps terminal on the other), but I didn't read anything that indicated it wouldn't work. Using it with a 68020 or 68030 would likely work better than with a 68000 for high speeds. -- Chris Gray usenet: alberta!ami-cg!cg CIS: 74007,1165
greg@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu (Gregory R. TRAVIS) (02/22/91)
I just bought an ASDG dual serial board, which is nice but the performance is disappointing. It does not seem to perform as well as the internal Amiga serial port. This is an A2500HD/30 system. I bought it over the Commodore card because I could not get confirmation that the Commodore card would drop DTR when the device was closed, which I absolutely need. I did some timings with it. I found that while running a Zmodem download to my Amiga via VLT that it took Professional Page 36 seconds to load and become ready. Starting ProPage while performing the same download using the same comm software and using the Amiga built-in port only took 13 seconds. Both downloads were through a 9600 baud Courier HST modem. While the machine was unloaded in any other way, the Amiga port would average about 925 chars/sec while the ASDG port would do about 910 chars/sec. I don't think the difference is statistically valid though. I rebooted the machine in between these tests to get rid of any caching effects. Also, while more difficult to quantify, the ASDG board racked up more transfer errors than the Amiga internal port while I was doing things like moving workbench windows around. I am not using ASDG's SDB tool (which allows you to use their board even with exceptionally stupid software which has serial.device unit 0 hard-wired) and use VLT's device selection requestor. Still, the ASDG software seems to start up a task called SIOSBX-RA which runs at very high priority. Setting the priority of this non-CLI task to a reasonable number allowed ProPage to load in under 15 seconds but made the error rate on transfers go through the roof and the comm software gave up. Anyone know why ASDG needs this task to be running, even when not using the DOS Handlers they provide (i.e. by opening their version of "serial.device" directly)? Outbound (i.e. uploading) I could not get note any timing differences between the ASDG and the Amiga built in port. So, I guess it loads the system pretty heavily, even for a $300 board. I am using the latest (ver 1.5) ASDG driver software. Anyone got timings for the Commodore board under the same situations? I was NOT using the other ASDG port when I ran these tests.
jesup@cbmvax.commodore.com (Randell Jesup) (02/22/91)
In article <1991Feb22.015548.21157@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu> greg@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu (Gregory R. TRAVIS) writes: >the Commodore card because I could not get confirmation that the >Commodore card would drop DTR when the device was closed, which >I absolutely need. The current A2232 software doesn't drop DTR on close. The driver is in the queue to be worked on RSN (Bryce is a very busy person at the moment with shepherding 2.0 out the door). -- Randell Jesup, Keeper of AmigaDos, Commodore Engineering. {uunet|rutgers}!cbmvax!jesup, jesup@cbmvax.commodore.com BIX: rjesup The compiler runs Like a swift-flowing river I wait in silence. (From "The Zen of Programming") ;-)
ggk@tirith.ocunix.on.ca (Gregory Kritsch) (02/25/21)
greg@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu (Gregory R. TRAVIS) writes: >I just bought an ASDG dual serial board, which is nice but the performance >is disappointing. It does not seem to perform as well as the internal Amiga >serial port. This is an A2500HD/30 system. I bought it over >the Commodore card because I could not get confirmation that the >Commodore card would drop DTR when the device was closed, which >I absolutely need. As I recall, the board has a small buffer (256 bytes?) only, no processor, and so counts entirely on your motherboard processor to do its magic. The internal serial port has a single byte buffer, but has a fairly high priority interrupt associated with it. >I am not using ASDG's SDB tool (which allows you to use their board >even with exceptionally stupid software which has serial.device >unit 0 hard-wired) and use VLT's device selection requestor. Still, >the ASDG software seems to start up a task called SIOSBX-RA which >runs at very high priority. Setting the priority of this non-CLI >task to a reasonable number allowed ProPage to load in under 15 >seconds but made the error rate on transfers go through the roof >and the comm software gave up. Anyone know why ASDG needs this >task to be running, even when not using the DOS Handlers they >provide (i.e. by opening their version of "serial.device" directly)? The high priority setting is quite reasonable. When the buffer on your serial board fills up, the most important thing to your machine should be transferring the data out of that buffer into main memory, right. If it's not transferred, then it becomes lost, which is a transmission error. It normally won't take that long to transfer, so you probably won't notice it a lot. Unless you're trying to do a download at 19200 baud... Did you happen to use something like xoper, which would report CPU loading and the % of time that the SIOSBX task was active? >So, I guess it loads the system pretty heavily, even for a $300 board. I am >using the latest (ver 1.5) ASDG driver software. Yup. Although I'm a bit suprised at how much its apparently loading your 2500/30. I suppose the bus interface isn't helping much though. >Anyone got timings for the Commodore board under the same situations? >I was NOT using the other ASDG port when I ran these tests. No. But I think (I'm not sure of this) the Commodore board has its own processor, which I assume means that it can get the data into memory essentially by DMA, without worrying the main processor about the transfer. (No, please don't start an argument about whether a DMA serial port is better than a non-DMA serial port - this time it should quite obvious at high speed). -- Gregory Kritsch | University of Waterloo Fido: 1:221/208.11110 [1:163/109.30] | 1B Computer Engineering OCUG: ggk@tirith.ocunix.on.ca |---------------------------- UUCP: ggk@tirith.UUCP | The University doesn't get ...!watmath!xenitec!tirith!ggk | a chance to censor me!