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Date:      Sun, 16 Jul 1995 18:05:00 +0930 (CST)
From:      Michael Smith <msmith@atrad.adelaide.edu.au>
To:        uk1@irz301.inf.tu-dresden.de (Ulf Kieber)
Cc:        freebsd-hardware@freebsd.org, bugs@sax.sax.de, j@uriah.heep.sax.de
Subject:   Re: multi IO boards
Message-ID:  <199507160835.SAA00682@genesis.atrad.adelaide.edu.au>
In-Reply-To: <199507141641.AA19457@irz301.inf.tu-dresden.de> from "Ulf Kieber" at Jul 14, 95 06:41:23 pm

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Ulf Kieber stands accused of saying:
> we currently discuss buying a multi IO card, and I'd need some help to
> make the proper decision.  As the market for that kinda equipment is
> rather narrow in Germany, I'm having a very hard time getting my hands
> on appropriate documentation.

The market is generally pretty rough.  You may have a (slightly) better time
if you try talking to a supplier that handles the industrial control
business, or one that's into SCO systems 8)

> We had an offer for a BocaBoard 1004 and BocaBoard 1008, both not
> usable for our purposes, because they are lacking modem control.  The
> IOAT66 seems to be ok, but has some restriction: only 6 ports, can
> only use IRQ 4 and 5 as shared IRQs (IRQ 4 is already used for our COM
> console, and hence cannot be freed).

Yuck.  Stay away.

> I'd like to hear, if there are any other cards available (I think
> there is at least an AST 8 port card I'd like to see documentation
> for), meeting the following requirements:

There's a number of 8-port AST compatibles that work quite well; you can
get them with 16550's already onboard.  (Mandatory for FreeBSD).

> - all ports fifo buffered,
> - shared IRQ possible (the more choices [especially the IRQs above 8]
>   the better),
> - hardware modem control,
> - 8 or 16 ports (best choice would be an 8 port card with an upgrade
>   option to 16 ports, maybe just some empty sockets on the board),

8 ports is the best I've seen.

> - DB25 connectors, if possible,

Not very easy 8)  the 4-port boards have a D37 connector, the 8-port ones
usually have a double-slot backplane with two D37's.  The cards come with 
D37 to D-25 adapters, so you do eventually get the D25's.

> - should of course be supported by FreeBSD.  :)

There's ten or so sites around here using them with no trouble at all.

> Rodney Grimes told me to look into the BocaBoard 2016, but asked me to
> verify if it meets our requirements.

The boards in use here are PC-COM boards, the "8 port RS232 FIFO card"

> Ulf Kieber

Hope that's of some use.

> Don't expect me to be a breeder, and I won't assume you're a fag.

I _like_ that 8)

-- 
]] Mike Smith, Software Engineer        msmith@atrad.adelaide.edu.au    [[
]] Genesis Software                     genesis@atrad.adelaide.edu.au   [[
]] High-speed data acquisition and                                      [[
]] realtime instrument control          (ph/fax) +61-8-267-3039         [[
]] My car has "demand start" - Terry Lambert                            [[



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