*BSD News Article 78517


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From: david@emeraldis.com (David G. Cannon)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.bsdi.misc
Subject: Re: BSD/OS 2.1: support for Digiboard PC/X?
Date: Mon, 16 Sep 96 22:38:54 GMT
Organization: Emerald Internet Services
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In article <51a60n$f7q@moon.igcom.net>, david@terra.igcom.net (David B. Bauman) wrote:
>  Michael Giegerich (migieger@luva.lb.bawue.de) wrote:
>  
>  : Does BSD/OS support Digiboard's PC/X multiport cards?
>  
>  Sure does. I found the PC/Xem (isa or pci) works well.


We have a PC/Xem card running 56 ports. We have been very pleased with the 
performance, however, we have experienced some "output stalled" messages that 
we believe is contributed to the PC/Xem card. The other thing you may want to 
consider is througput rates and the number of ports it will support. The 
PC/Xem card will support 64 ports, but you will do good to get 38400bps 
throughput on all 64 ports. You certainly won't get 57600bps. Even the Digi 
techs will tell you that they only guarantee 57600bps on 32 ports.

I suggest you check-out the Comtrol Rocketport. It is also supported by BSDI. 
It will support 128 ports! They guarantee a throughput of 230,400bps full 
duplex on 32 ports.  They also say it will perform at 57,600bps across all 128 
ports! The Digi PC/Xem card has one 16bit processor, but the Rocketport has 4 
16bit 36mhz processors. Besides all of that, it is *significantly* cheaper 
than Digi's PC/Xem card and so are their equivalents to the Ports/16em port 
boxes. Now, I have not actually used one  yet, but as you can see, I'm already 
sold on the product. We plan to purchase one in the next couple of weeks.

Ask them to send you their Product Comparison book. Make sure they send you 
the Unix comparison rather than the Novell comparison. They used two different 
flavors of Unix for their testing (SVR4.2 and SCO).

*David*