RS-232... what is good enough?

[Andy Valencia]

    I tried to return mail this, but your att site wasn't known by
our mail hub.  I hope you'll forgive my posting of this mail, but
it seems like an interesting question: what exactly *is* good?

				Andy

>SCO does very, very poorly in servicing tty interrupts, due to the
>horrible iAEC-286 chip.
>
>You can, however, improve the throughput by installing a "smart"
>serial board.  With a smart board, you can get reasonable serial
>throughput, because you no longer have to rely on the `286 to service
>the interrupt.
>
>					Dr. T. Andrews, Systems
>					CompuData, Inc.  DeLand


	For some definition of "poorly".  We've run three 9600 baud
TTY lines full-out into the box (yes, that's incoming characters every
300 microseconds or so) without lost characters.  When we went to
an eight port Arnet box we, of course, could do even more.  But three
of'em without a hitch seems better than "poor" to me.  Not as good
as RSTS/E on an 11/70, maybe, but we're talking $2000 worth of hardware
here!
					Andy Valencia