From owner-freebsd-hackers Tue Feb 28 19:32:53 1995 Return-Path: hackers-owner Received: (from majordom@localhost) by freefall.cdrom.com (8.6.9/8.6.6) id TAA02170 for hackers-outgoing; Tue, 28 Feb 1995 19:32:53 -0800 Received: from hutcs.cs.hut.fi (root@hutcs.cs.hut.fi [130.233.192.2]) by freefall.cdrom.com (8.6.9/8.6.6) with SMTP id TAA02164 for ; Tue, 28 Feb 1995 19:32:43 -0800 Received: from shadows.cs.hut.fi by hutcs.cs.hut.fi with SMTP id AA21638 (5.65c8/HUTCS-S 1.4 for ); Wed, 1 Mar 1995 05:31:40 +0200 Received: by shadows.cs.hut.fi (8.6.10/SMI-SVR4) id FAA07767; Wed, 1 Mar 1995 05:32:31 +0200 Date: Wed, 1 Mar 1995 05:32:31 +0200 From: hsu@cs.hut.fi (Heikki Suonsivu) Message-Id: <199503010332.FAA07767@shadows.cs.hut.fi> To: Tom Samplonius Cc: freebsd-hackers@freefall.cdrom.com In-Reply-To: Tom Samplonius's message of 28 Feb 1995 00:38:58 +0200 Subject: Re: pppd inactivity timeout? Organization: Helsinki University of Technology, Otaniemi, Finland Sender: hackers-owner@FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk > 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