*BSD News Article 83176


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From: j@uriah.heep.sax.de (J Wunsch)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.admin,comp.protocols.ppp,comp.unix.questions,comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc,comp.unix.bsd.netbsd.misc
Subject: Re: Best Unix for SLIP/PPP Server- Best Reliability/Cost?
Date: 19 Nov 1996 02:01:52 GMT
Organization: Private BSD site, Dresden
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cjs@cynic.portal.ca (Curt Sampson) wrote:

> >    Modern multi-port serial cards will do hardware handshaking themselves
> >    and use FIFOs.
> 
> And how does the data get out of the FIFOs? You've got it: polling.
> No interrupts are generated.

Nope.  ``Tx buffer empty'' interrupts are probably as old as serial
communication chips are.  Of course, back in the Z80 days, it was also
common to wire the SIO for DMA transfers.  In this situation, the DMAC
caused the interrupt once its block counter went 0.  This allowed for
a fairly large ``FIFO''.

-- 
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. ;-)