From owner-freebsd-hackers Thu Oct 19 09:26:56 1995 Return-Path: owner-hackers Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.6.12/8.6.6) id JAA24949 for hackers-outgoing; Thu, 19 Oct 1995 09:26:56 -0700 Received: from brasil.moneng.mei.com (brasil.moneng.mei.com [151.186.20.4]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.6.12/8.6.6) with ESMTP id JAA24943 for ; Thu, 19 Oct 1995 09:26:53 -0700 Received: (from jgreco@localhost) by brasil.moneng.mei.com (8.7.Beta.1/8.7.Beta.1) id LAA28235; Thu, 19 Oct 1995 11:25:03 -0500 From: Joe Greco Message-Id: <199510191625.LAA28235@brasil.moneng.mei.com> Subject: Re: Bragging rights.. To: dennis@etinc.com (dennis) Date: Thu, 19 Oct 1995 11:25:02 -0500 (CDT) Cc: jkh@time.cdrom.com, hackers@freebsd.org In-Reply-To: <199510191607.MAA27586@etinc.com> from "dennis" at Oct 19, 95 12:07:45 pm X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] Content-Type: text Sender: owner-hackers@freebsd.org Precedence: bulk > >Well, this is half me needing to tell *somebody* and half actually > >being informative since some of the people on this list have wanted to > >test various FreeBSD audio/video apps with me and were frustrated that > >I only had that dinkly little V.34 modem. Well no more! > > > >I have now joined Amancio in the extended peni^H^H^H^Hbandwidth ISDN > >club! :-) :-) > How much for the whole setup (16550's + Adtran)? I'd like to compare it to a > sync card with the less expensive motorolas. You may be able to get 128k > with no overhead for a few dollars more. 16550's - free essentially because no serious hacker will buy 16450 serial ports. For the 16550-impaired, you can get a *good* card (STB DSP-550) with two 16550's for around $31 wholesale, including a bidir parallel port. The Motorola terminal adapters we use (UTA-220's) can do both sync and async. Never tried the sync. You can find less expensive terminal adapters that only do async. The UTA-220's were around $650 I believe when purchased some time ago. Things like Bitsurfers should be in the <~$400 range. All else being equal, I would agree that the ET/502* solutions are a nice way to go, but there are downsides: 1) The ET/* board is at least $500 more expensive than a comparable 16550 solution. 2) Typically you have to run sync at both ends of the link. Many ISP's will charge you more if you burn one of their valuable sync serial router ports, but could care less about the cheaper async terminal server ports - this can be a difference of up to a few hundred bucks per month! 3) A terminal adaptor that does sync _may_ be more expensive. Of course, the upsides are that there is low host CPU overhead (you're not dealing with 1000 interrupts per second), and you get full 128K (although with the latest Motorola stuff that's apparently a nonissue). Maybe I don't care because either way I dedicate a host to being a router - so host CPU loading is a nonissue to me. ... Joe ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Joe Greco - Systems Administrator jgreco@ns.sol.net Solaria Public Access UNIX - Milwaukee, WI 414/342-4847