Date: Wed, 1 Mar 1995 05:32:31 +0200 From: hsu@cs.hut.fi (Heikki Suonsivu) To: Tom Samplonius <tom@haven.uniserve.com> Cc: freebsd-hackers@freefall.cdrom.com Subject: Re: pppd inactivity timeout? Message-ID: <199503010332.FAA07767@shadows.cs.hut.fi> In-Reply-To: Tom Samplonius's message of 28 Feb 1995 00:38:58 %2B0200
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> A Cyclades driver should be just around the corner. Bruce, any word on
> this? Did you get your card from Cyclades yet?
I don't know too much about this card. So what does it do over a dumb
16550A board? How many ports? Full modem control lines? How much does
it cost?
I think the major differences are
- Serial controller is smarter Cyrix chip.
- It uses shared memory instead of IO instructions.
- It has got true hardware flow control (on those boards which have all the
signals).
- The board is simple, which I would guess to make manufacturing them
pretty cheap, and that equals dropping prices in future.
- There also are other manufacturers using the same chip, which probably
also helps to keep the price tag low by competition.
- Cyclades is helpful towards software developers. The driver design kit
is freely available in ftp.netcom.com, cy/cyclades. They were the first
intelligent serial board manufacturer to get a Linux driver (according to
what I heard, they run out of stock when the word about this spread :-).
- Support for 115.2k on all ports (and according to the manuals, 150k, if
anything happens to support that speed).
Cyclades delivers 8 and 16 port versions. We have tested both under linux,
and have got one 386-33 serving 14 V34 modems DTE locked at 115.2k. Kernel
cpu seems to stay under 15% all the time (but it is hard to measure in such
a slow machine). We have had stability problems during the last two weeks
(after adding two more modems), but before that it run for three weeks just
fine. The machine is a junkyard collection machine known to play tricks in
the past, so I don't know yet whether it was the additional modems, PC
hardware, Linux driver, Linux (1.1.88) or the cyclades board. 8 port board
hasn't failed yet.
We will be testing out a 16 port board at full 115.2k raw speed for leased
line modem server in about three weeks, which probably is a better test
than 16 modems.
Unfortunately Cyclades' promotional offer just run out, it was $99 for
8-port RJ11 board, $199 for 8-port DB25 (full modem control) and $399 for
16-port version (full modem control). List prices are about double, but
low-profit resellers probably help in this. Someone might organize a group
order? Or negotiate a FreeBSD discount :-)?
We also use 4-port AST clones at 115.2k V34 modems, one per machine. If
you don't need more than 4 ports, they seem to work well enough, at
unbeatable price/port ratio. I haven't tested 16-port 16550 boards.
[We resell Cyclades boards in Finland and use them in our terminal/modem
servers (ISP), so this may be biased :-)]
--
Heikki Suonsivu, T{ysikuu 10 C 83/02210 Espoo/FINLAND,
hsu@cs.hut.fi home +358-0-8031121 work -4513377 fax -4555276 riippu SN
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