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Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.anu.edu.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!news.mel.connect.com.au!munnari.OZ.AU!spool.mu.edu!howland.reston.ans.net!blackbush.xlink.net!zib-berlin.de!irz401!uriah.heep!news From: j@uriah.heep.sax.de (J Wunsch) Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc Subject: Re: Alternative to Expensive Multiport Serial Boards...? Date: 1 Jan 1996 12:07:18 GMT Organization: Private BSD site, Dresden Lines: 28 Message-ID: <4c8ipm$30e@uriah.heep.sax.de> References: <4c7oep$riv@news.voicenet.com> Reply-To: joerg_wunsch@uriah.heep.sax.de (Joerg Wunsch) NNTP-Posting-Host: localhost.heep.sax.de Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Newsreader: knews 0.9.3 Marines! (Marines!) writes: > The multiport boards from Boca, Digi, etc seem to be used by many, but > why couldn't you simply use INTERNAL modems on an inexpensive DX2-66 > board? Many people (including me) don't like internal modems at all. It's much harder to reset them than an external one. :) (Sometimes you even have to power-cycle.) Some internal modems don't implement the full UART functionality, hence the kernel doesn't detect them. > Let's say 4 internal modems. For this setup, you need a motherboard, > 8Megs RAM, case, e-net card, and a floppy drive (oh yeah, you need the > modems). Shopping mail-order, you're looking at $400-500. 4 internal modems is about the largest possible number; you're running out of IRQ's if you want more (and sometimes also out of configurable IO addresses). That's one of the biggest advantages of the dumb multiport cards: they use a shared interrupt line. -- cheers, J"org joerg_wunsch@uriah.heep.sax.de -- http://www.sax.de/~joerg/ -- NIC: JW11-RIPE Never trust an operating system you don't have sources for. ;-)