Date: Wed, 10 Dec 1997 18:11:35 -0800 (PST) From: Ken McGlothlen <mcglk@serv.net> To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Serial port overload! Message-ID: <199712110211.SAA19859@ralf.serv.net>
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I love my FreeBSD box. Oh, sure, I go to my Macintosh when I do graphics work, and I go to my NT box when I feel the urge to lose some hair, but the machine that does the most work around here is the FreeBSD box, mostly because the NT box has shown itself to be inadequate at *so* many things. For example, one of the things I was planning on using the NT box for was as a print server, but it turns out that it dumbs down the output (without telling you, of course), so the nice 600 dpi output from the Macintosh becomes 300 dpi after going through the NT box. (This has, by the way, been a constant problem with NT. Either it won't let anything but NT or Win95 boxes talk to it, or it makes things stupid. This is why my FreeBSD box has become so central to my little computer lab here at home.) So I have an HP LaserJet 6MP, a PostScript printer. It has two Centronics- style parallel ports (the normal B, and the smaller C connector) and one Macintosh 8-pin DIN connector, which I assume is a serial connector. The parallel ports are bidirectional, but FreeBSD doesn't support those yet. And the two serial ports on the FreeBSD box are already taken up: one serial mouse (I couldn't get a bus mouse to work), and one modem. Hence, my request for advice. I could try to get a bus mouse to work, but I was unable to last time, and I'd hate to waste my time with that, especially as I also want to eventually add a UPS to the FreeBSD box, and the basic problem ---not enough serial ports---would just come back. So I'm considering getting one of those Boca six-port things, or STB four-port things. Unfortunately, I don't know if I have any IRQs left over (not being that versed in PC hardware), and I haven't seen *any* RJ45->8-pin DIN connectors. Has anybody already run into this situation? If so, how did you resolve it, and what's your current configuration? Thanks in advance. ---Ken McGlothlen mcglk@serv.net mcglk@interscapes.com
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