Arnet Smart Board

[Phil Hughes]

In article <4787 at dasys1.UUCP>, manes at dasys1.UUCP (Steve Manes) writes:
> Question: is anyone running an Arnet smart board on a 386 here?  I got this
> board on approval two weeks ago and, despite a couple of hours on-line with
> Arnet engineers (who claim that the product works fine on every 386 of
> their acquaintance), it consistently crashes when 'aspserv' is loaded and
> one of two otherwise benign programs (work great with a Digiboard) is run.

I could tell a long story about the board but here is a short one that
will give you the idea.  I originally got the SmartPort board for a 
286 system running XENIX.  It would not flush the buffers right when
going in and out of raw mode.  I could not convince them of this.
We went through zillions of revisions, etc.  The problem existed in
XENIX 286 on a 5-star, on an IBM AT and on a MicroSmart (Mylex based)
386.  I finally got Terry Neu on the phone and  made him type in exactly
what I did.  Wow, a bug.  Anyway, they appear to have fixed this problem
but as far as I know modem control still screws up.

Our board in in the 386 system we use in the classroom because there are
no modems on that system.  It seems to be running ok but I would probably
buy a DigiBoard for the next one because they claim they will send me
the source for the drivers.  I have about 40 hours invested in debugging
the smart port board.  Usually we charge more for this kind of work
than the one free t-shirt Arnet sent me. 
on the phone and made him d
-- 
Phil    uunet!pilchuck!ssc!fyl