Looking for smart serial ports for Unix

Karl Denninger karl at ddsw1.MCS.COM
Sat Dec 23 04:30:58 AEST 1989


In article <1101 at crpmks.UUCP> garyb at crpmks.UUCP (Gary Blumenstein) writes:
>In article <1989Dec12.162639.26573 at ddsw1.MCS.COM> you write:
>>In article <8912120109.AA17762 at decwrl.dec.com> paine at fungus.dec.com (Willy Paine) writes:
>>>
>>>I am still looking for good multi-ports board for modem type terminal
>>
>>Digiboard IS good.  One of the better ones.  They are not cheap, but are
>>worth it.
> 
>Not for my money.  I'm sure the net has already heard about my positive 
>experience with the Equinox Megaport boards.  Once again, these discussions 
>compell me to keep re-emphasizing this.  If you buy DigibBoard, (or Arnet, 
>Computone, Anvil, Specialix, Etc. for that matter) you are essentially buying 
>the same OLD technology just served to us a different way.

Specialix?  Have you seen what they are doing?  Or are you hypothesizing?

Admittedly Digi has the old venerable technology -- but they execute it
>very< well.  Specialix is a different ballgame entirely.  Specialix boards
are a multiprocessor distributed system, and not even in the same ballpark
as the others you mention.  Equinox may be the same; I haven't worked with
one of those so I can't comment fairly.

>In my opinion, you LOSE in terms of price/performance, functionality, 
>flexibility, expandability, ease of installation, and use.  You will wind 
>up with the same OLD problems.  For example,  you will be surprised when 
>you find out that your $800 smart board can't run bi-directional UUCP w/ 
>modem control.  You will be dismayed to find out that you have to change 
>standard terminal stty settings in order to accomodate the intelligent 
>capabilities of some boards e.g. Intelliport TAB processing.  Forget about the 
>poor folks who don't even know what "stty" IS!  You will be annoyed to
>find yourself constantly ordering PROM and driver upgrades, and you will be 
>extra peeved when these so called upgrades (in some cases) actually DEGRADE 
>the performance of your board!  Sure, I can't wait to spend *my* hard earned 
>money on this!

Prom updates?  What PROMs?  Specialix has all firmware in "loadware"; the
driver loads the board on powerup.

Anvil?   Yep.  Proms there.  Digi?  Nope -- all downloaded (again).

>consider.  In my opinion, Equinox sets the quintessential performance and 
>functionality standard that we have been demanding from the i/o board market
>for years, and have not been getting up until now.

Ok.  How many ports can it run on INPUT at 19200 and not lose anything?
Can it do 38,400, and again, how many without character loss?

>Now as far as DigiBoard is concerned, you will find much better price /
>performance with Equinox.  Notice how DigiBoard didn't include Equinox in 
>their latest ad campaign which shows graphs of the relative performance 
>characteristics of several competitor's boards.  

Again, check out Specialix too.

>been around for years.  Theres no way they can hope to compete with custom 
>designed ASIC technology and polling drivers that have been specifically 
>designed and tuned to handle serial i/o.  

Or Multiprocessor technology with 20Mhz CPUs (which, by the way, do a damn
good job of running SIO ports; I am familiar with the Z280 that specialix
uses).

>>Specialix is a new one for us, but very promising.  The driver has a few
>>bugs in it, but nothing terrible that UUCP won't deal with.  They also have
>>pledged to solve the problems -- more than many other companies have said
>>they would do (or have actually done)!
>
>I've heard several other board companies make pledges too.  Why would the 
>pledges coming from Specialix be any more convincing than pledges coming from 
>say, Computone or Anvil?

Well, perhaps because they are willing to allow us source code access?  Naw,
that couldn't have anything to do with it, could it?

Can I get source code (under a non-disclosure, of course) from Equinox?  If
not, I'm not interested at >any< price.  Specialix will do this for you,
which means you CAN fix the bugs that >are< there.  

Seriously, when was the last time you got your hands on any commercial
product that didn't have at least one nit you would like to fix?

>The intelligent I/O board market isn't exactly new anymore.  Doesn't it seem
>ludicrous to buy expensive serial boards only to find that you have to run 
>certain applications on your dumb port?  (Note: this may not necessarily
>be true with UUCP on Specialix, as Karl seems to indicate.)

It certainly isn't!

>Incidentally, I read Karl's earlier posting about the Specialix boards and 
>considered using them before I went with Equinox.  The 56K baud speed seemed 
>attractive however, I after doing some research, I'm  still convinced that 
>Equinox is the superior board.  (I will follow-up on this in a forthcoming 
>article.)

Please do.  I'd like to have some good commentary on this subject!

>Karl, have you looked at Equinox yet?  What are your thoughts?  I havn't found
>any flaws with the Megaport boards and believe me, I've done my best to try
>to find something that wouldn't work on them.  The board emulates the standard 
>serial port so well that we had SL/IP running with SCO's  TCP/ip and getting 
>1800cps with practically no overhead.  Considering that SCO claims SL/IP will 
>only work on the standard serial port is a good tribute to Equinox's 
>functionality.

Equinox hasn't given us a board to play with, we don't know who distributes
them.  We >need< an evaluation unit to make decisions and form conclusions.
We simply won't buy a board that we might want to scrap; we tried that with
Anvil and won't again.  Specialix has gotten us a card for evaluation
(through a distributor, but still it is here).  I have another distributor
who will allow us to use a board >until we are satisfied with it< -- meaning
if there are bugs, we can get them fixed and don't have to worry about
needing to return the card until it works.

Will Equinox do this for us?  Will they do it for anyone?

>Another thing, a friend of mine was able to install his Equinox board under
>SCO UNIX 3.2 and use the INTERACTIVE drivers with no problem whatsoever.  If 
>anyone wants datails on this, they can call me.

Most Unix 3.2 drivers are interchangable if you know how to install them.
This is not surprising at all (I freely interchange drivers all the time
without trouble between 3.2 systems).

>What I like about the Equinox is that I can take it out of the box and plug it
>into my computer without messing around with switches or jumpers, install the 
>drivers, plug in a standard 6 lead modular RJ11 cable to my Telebit (save 
>yourself some time and use one of Equinox's RJ11<->DB25 adapters), enable 
>getty and walk away.  No hidden surprises, no field engineering required,
>no support hotline callbacks, no driver revisions, no ROM upgrades.  It just
>works.  Period.  

That's interesting.  Can it sustain 38,400 baud INPUT on say, 6 to 8 ports
without problems?  SUSTAINED transfer now, not burst, and with no flow
control.  The Specialix board seems to be able to do that with Zmodem 
(which is one hell of a way to beat up I/O channels).  How about 56KB?  Can
it do that >at all<?  The Specialix board can and does.  Is it expandable 
without buying another card?  I can take the Specialix board to 32 ports 
from 8 in modular steps.

--
Karl Denninger (karl at ddsw1.MCS.COM, <well-connected>!ddsw1!karl)
Public Access Data Line: [+1 708 566-8911], Voice: [+1 708 566-8910]
Macro Computer Solutions, Inc.		"Quality Solutions at a Fair Price"



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