loc@yrloc.ipsa.reuter.COM (Leigh Clayton) (02/03/91)
I have not been able to get much information about the Computone device drivers, and the problems I've had with the thing I've been left to myself to deal with (Neither ISC nor Computone seems to care whether the thing works in 386/ix or not). I'd dearly love to get a driver that I have source for, and don't mind doing some hacking, but does anyone know whether FAS can be expected to 'basically' support this board? By that I mean that I can't even find mention in my system files of the Interrupt vectors, IO port addresses, and so forth that the thing uses, let alone how it's 8-port multipexing works and stuff like that. If (as I guess) the answer is 'no', can anyone suggest some other way to achieve the same thing? I have no budget, and don't (corporately) even own the board, so $$ outlay will have to be low enough that I'm willing to pay out of my own pocket to remove the aggravation I currently experience with the stupid thing (it's fast, but that's little consolation when I can't get it to work properly). Thanks ../Leigh ----------------------------------------------------------- loc@tmsoft.UUCP uunet!mnetor!tmsoft!loc loc@ipsa.reuter.COM (Leigh Clayton)
clewis@ferret.ocunix.on.ca (Chris Lewis) (02/07/91)
In article <1991Feb3.053633.13387@yrloc.ipsa.reuter.COM> loc@yrloc.ipsa.reuter.COM (Leigh Clayton) writes: > I have not been able to get much information about the Computone >device drivers, and the problems I've had with the thing I've been left >to myself to deal with (Neither ISC nor Computone seems to care whether >the thing works in 386/ix or not). > I'd dearly love to get a driver that I have source for, and don't mind >doing some hacking, but does anyone know whether FAS can be expected >to 'basically' support this board? By that I mean that I can't even find >mention in my system files of the Interrupt vectors, IO port addresses, >and so forth that the thing uses, let alone how it's 8-port multipexing >works and stuff like that. I've spoken to computone more than once, and you're right, they're not much help. The documentation is very poor. The computone board cannot be controlled by the FAS driver or anything else that's designed for 8250 chip-style serial ports. The computone board is built similarly to many of the other "intelligent" multiport boards, and has a microprocessor on it (a Z80 if I remember correctly), and a fair bit of memory. The drivers speak to the board thru shared memory, and the CPU on the board does a lot of the work. The interface between the on-board processor and the rest of the machine is completely undocumented. I think the driver even downloads software to the on-board CPU, but that may have been another board. I've fought with these things before, and it doesn't help that there are about 3 or 4 different types of 8-port computone boards. (Computone went into receivership, then bought some other company doing the same thing, and they came out of receivership - they're producing both boards plus other multi-port boards now). Perhaps the best thing is to make ABSOLUTELY certain that you have the latest ROMS and driver software. I have no idea what the latest versions are, because it's been over a year since I've had to touch one of these accursed things. My remembrance was that: - the computone is "useable" for direct-connected terminals and printers provided that you have the latest firmware/software. On both Xenix and ISC (though, this is back in the days of 1.0.6) - modem control doesn't work worth a darn. - the snazzy features (transparent print thru and the other gunge) are useless. Perhaps your best bet is to try to continue to use the computone for your terminals, and then try to buy a 2 or 4 port dumb serial card which you should be able to pick up for $40 or so, plus modify FAS to work with that. I suspect FAS on a 4 or 8 port dumb board would outperform the computone. In a previous incarnation, I designed a 8-port board that didn't have any of the fancy features, not much memory (the expensive part) and had termio on the card. Worked great. Would have cost only $100-$200. Too bad the company made only a half-dozen of the things before they cancelled their UNIX project (and me). Real fast. -- Chris Lewis, Phone: (613) 832-0541, Internet: clewis@ferret.ocunix.on.ca UUCP: uunet!mitel!cunews!latour!ecicrl!clewis Moderator of the Ferret Mailing List (ferret-request@eci386) Psroff enquiries: psroff-request@eci386, current patchlevel is *7*.
larry@nstar.rn.com (Larry Snyder) (02/08/91)
clewis@ferret.ocunix.on.ca (Chris Lewis) writes: >on it (a Z80 if I remember correctly), and a fair bit of memory. The drivers it depends on which computone - the intelliport (which we have) has a 10 mhz 80186 - I believe the Advantage has the Z80 >Perhaps the best thing is to make ABSOLUTELY certain that you have the >latest ROMS and driver software. I have no idea what the latest versions not really - I have 3.14 firmware (which is or was the latest) but the current drivers don't work with a hoot (at least here on nstar supporting multiple bidirectional modems lock at high DTE speeds).. I believe we are using either 4.28 or 4.31 drivers (4.40 is the current release which didn't work for us).. -- Larry Snyder, NSTAR Public Access Unix 219-289-0287 (HST/PEP/V.32/v.42bis) regional UUCP mapping coordinator {larry@nstar.rn.com, ..!uunet!nstar!larry, larry%nstar@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu}
chip@chinacat.Unicom.COM (Chip Rosenthal) (02/08/91)
In article <1289@ecicrl.ocunix.on.ca> clewis@ferret.ocunix.on.ca (Chris Lewis) writes: >My remembrance was that: > - the snazzy features (transparent print thru and the other gunge) > are useless. ^^^^^^^? I think `dangerous' is the correct word. My experience has been that Computone cards irrevocably lockup eventually if you don't disable all that stuff in the /etc/ic_control (or whatever it's called) file. I never could figure out how they got so popular - they don't work. My opinion is that half the crap serial card vendors put into their boards and drivers don't belong there. Multiple tty's, transparent print, keyboard mapping and the like should be performed on the system through pty's and line disciplines and stream modules. Even though this gunk is totally wrong, rude, and crude - I still tend to use them. You know...too lazy to write a transparent print daemon which does it correctly :-) I've found, as a rule, Digiboard and Equinox tend to understand what is needed for a UNIX system, and have had good results with both vendors. The Equinox scheme for full modem control is a bit screwey, but it's probably a reasonable tradeoff for the port density you get. Both vendors also seem to have good support behind their boards, and I feel comfortable recommending them. Neither vendor is cheap - but if you want cheap you should be getting a dumb card, populating it with 16550's, and running FAS. In intelligent serial cards, my experience is that cheap buys you broke. -- Chip Rosenthal 512-482-8260 | Unicom Systems Development | I saw Elvis in my wtmp file. <chip@chinacat.Unicom.COM> |