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Date:      Wed, 27 Nov 1996 13:41:48 -0800
From:      Alexander Winske <alex@yahoo.com>
To:        gerg@stallion.oz.au
Cc:        hardware@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: FreeBSD as Terminal Server
Message-ID:  <199611272141.NAA06470@honker.yahoo.com>
In-Reply-To: <9611271422.aa01993@cluster.stallion.oz.au> (message from Greg Ungerer on Wed, 27 Nov 1996 14:22:26 %2B1000 (est))

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Well, I ended up getting the Cyclades boards, and when I 
get everything wired up I'll let you know if there are any
big reasons *not* to use them....

Alex
>
> 
> Hiya All,
> 
> Sorry for the late response on this...
> (Hopefully the following attributions are correct, sorry if not :-)
> 
> Bruce Evans <bde@zeta.org.au> writes:
> >>In reply to Alexander Winske who wrote:
> >>> Howdy,
> >>>  I'm looking to set up a largish terminal server on
> >>> a FreeBSD box. (I want to log console output and allow
> >>> console sessions with approx. 75-100 hosts).
> >>> 
> >>> Can anyone out there recommend a flavor of multiport
> >>> serial card that will allow me to have that many ports?
> >>> I would think that they wouldn't have to be doing more than
> >>> 2400 baud each, if that makes any difference...
> >
> >3 * 32-port Cyclades boards should work OK at such a low speed,
> >but are very expensive (list prices are US$1328 for a 32Ye (ISA)
> >and $1537 for a 32YeP (PCI).  Discount prices seem to be slightly
> >more than half the list prices).
> >
> >>Look at some of the newer Stallion boards, I think they support
> >>upto 64 ports per card, so two of them should have you
> >>rolling.
> 
> Yeah that is right. The EasyConnection 8/64 can do up to 64 ports
> per bus slot (ISA, EISA, and MCA buses supported). The EasyConnection
> 8/32 PCI board will also go up to 64 ports (don't you just love
> the names marketing comes up with ;-).
> 
> The 8/64 is a real intelligent board with off-board CPU and large
> buffer memory so perforamce tends to be very good. It does not use
> interrupts to the host, so host overhead tends to be very low too.
> 64 ports at 2400 baud won't even start to work it hard.
> 
> 
> >You'd need to translate the istallion driver from the Linlish :-).
> 
> Huh??
> What do you mean?
> How mush more FreeBSDish can it be made?
> 
> 
> >The current version is too green to use.  It disables interrupts
> >and calls tsleep() :-(.
> 
> I would hardly call it green, people have been using them very happily
> for more than a year now...
> 
> 
> >
> >I did a quick check for drivers in isa/*.c that abuse disable_intr()
> >and found these:
> >
> >ctx.c: disables interrupts and calls uiomove().  Apart from disabling
> [driver list sniped]
> 
> Did you let of the maintainers of these drivers know so they could
> "fix" up the problem?
> 
> In any case this is very easy to "fix" for the Stallion drivers. If you
> look at a lot of the cases of the disabled interrupts they are turned off
> for no more than a couple of dozen instructions...
> 
> Regards
> Greg
> 
> 
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Greg Ungerer                                       EMAIL: gerg@stallion.com
> Stallion Technologies Pty Ltd                      PHONE:   +61 7 3270 4271
> 33 Woodstock Rd, Toowong, QLD 4066, Australia      FAX:     +61 7 3270 4245
> 



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