Multiport I/O cards: intelligent or dumb?

[Uwe Doering]

toad at cellar.UUCP (Tony Shepps) writes:

>We're running a BBS under SCO Unix.  Right now, we have two lines, but in the 
>near future we'd like to expand to three or four.
>
>The tough question is whether to go with the cheap non-intelligent multi-port 
>card or the more expensive intelligent version.
>
>We are running HST dual-standard modems exclusively, so we expect to always 
>communicate with the modems at 38,400 baud.  Beyond the BBS users and news 
>processing, there is little activity on the system.  Of course, we can 
>visualize a situation where 4 people are all downloading at 14,400 baud; but 
>would there be a noticeable difference with the intelligent I/O?
>
>Any hints would be *greatly* appreciated.  Thanks in advance!

You could install the FAS 2.08 serial driver for dumb ports (posted to the
net some months ago, it's freeware). If you use it together with NS16550A
UART chips, even four full speed downloads at the same time are no
problem with that combination. And, most important, it _won't_ bring your
machine down to it's knees during the downloads. FAS 2.08 has full-duplex
RTS/CTS hardware flow control and other nice features not found in
conventional dumb port drivers. It runs unter SCO UNIX and most other
286/386 UNIX or XENIX flavors.

     Uwe
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