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Date:      Thu, 24 Aug 1995 11:44:55 -0500 (CDT)
From:      Joe Greco <jgreco@brasil.moneng.mei.com>
To:        fenner@parc.xerox.com (Bill Fenner)
Cc:        terryl@cs.stanford.edu, freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: ISDN Anyone?
Message-ID:  <199508241644.LAA19807@brasil.moneng.mei.com>
In-Reply-To: <95Aug24.092440pdt.177475@crevenia.parc.xerox.com> from "Bill Fenner" at Aug 24, 95 09:24:38 am

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> Er, forgive me if I'm being obtuse, but don't you need a higher serial rate 
> than 115200 to get full performance out of 2 B channels?

Yes.  You get about 90% cap at 115200.

However, I challenge you to plug a TA into a standard PC serial port and go
faster than that.  :-)  (The UTA-220 can't hit 230.4K at this point in time
anyways, so the picture *was* the optimal setup, and a PC serial port can't
go faster with a standard crystal).

For the brave, you can take a standard PC serial card and play
switchum-crystalum.  I personally prefer and special-order STB's DSP-550
cards (2 9-pin serial and a bidir parallel, Startech 16552 part) which lend
themselves to such a modification quite nicely, as they use a standard
1.8432MHz crystal.  Some motherboards with built in serial and/or all-in-one
multifunction cards apparently derive the clock from a higher frequency 
crystal and may need those rates for other things (not like I'd feel too
comfortable replacing crystals on a MB).

The surgery is simple.  Pull the 1.8432MHz crystal.  Insert a 3.6864MHz
crystal, or a 7.3728MHz crystal.  The former is 2x, the latter is 4x.  Now
when you talk to that port at 9600 baud you are actually at {19200, 38400
depending on 2x or 4x}.  Or if you talk to that port at 115200 you are
actually at {230400, 460800}.  You lose the ability to do some of the lower
speeds, but then again... so what.

Note: Chintzy line driver chips may not cope too well.  Note^2:  The faster
you go, the shorter and more shielded your cable should be!!!  (I haven't
had any problems at 230400 but then I tend to build quality cables myself).

For the chickenhearted:  I have a pair of DSP-550's modified to run 230400
that I no longer use (I am tending to purchase MB's with built in serial
ports).  If anybody really needs one, well...  hey they can get you a
20K/sec network link and they're cheaper than Ethernet cards (and you get
TWO interfaces).  :-)

... Joe

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Joe Greco - Systems Administrator			      jgreco@ns.sol.net
Solaria Public Access UNIX - Milwaukee, WI			   414/342-4847



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