Computone/Intelliport device drivers .vs. FAS

[Chris Lewis]

In article <1991Feb3.053633.13387 at yrloc.ipsa.reuter.COM> loc at yrloc.ipsa.reuter.COM (Leigh Clayton) writes:

> I have not been able to get much information about the Computone
>device drivers, and the problems I've had with the thing I've been left
>to myself to deal with (Neither ISC nor Computone seems to care whether
>the thing works in 386/ix or not).

> I'd dearly love to get a driver that I have source for, and don't mind
>doing some hacking, but does anyone know whether FAS can be expected
>to 'basically' support this board? By that I mean that I can't even find
>mention in my system files of the Interrupt vectors, IO port addresses,
>and so forth that the thing uses, let alone how it's 8-port multipexing
>works and stuff like that.

I've spoken to computone more than once, and you're right, they're
not much help.  The documentation is very poor.  The computone board
cannot be controlled by the FAS driver or anything else that's designed
for 8250 chip-style serial ports.  The computone board is built similarly
to many of the other "intelligent" multiport boards, and has a microprocessor
on it (a Z80 if I remember correctly), and a fair bit of memory.  The drivers
speak to the board thru shared memory, and the CPU on the board does a lot
of the work.  The interface between the on-board processor and the rest
of the machine is completely undocumented.  I think the driver even
downloads software to the on-board CPU, but that may have been another
board.

I've fought with these things before, and it doesn't help that there
are about 3 or 4 different types of 8-port computone boards.  (Computone
went into receivership, then bought some other company doing the same
thing, and they came out of receivership - they're producing both boards
plus other multi-port boards now).

Perhaps the best thing is to make ABSOLUTELY certain that you have the
latest ROMS and driver software.  I have no idea what the latest versions
are, because it's been over a year since I've had to touch one of these
accursed things.

My remembrance was that:
    - the computone is "useable" for direct-connected terminals and printers
      provided that you have the latest firmware/software.  On both
      Xenix and ISC (though, this is back in the days of 1.0.6)
    - modem control doesn't work worth a darn.
    - the snazzy features (transparent print thru and the other gunge)
      are useless.

Perhaps your best bet is to try to continue to use the computone
for your terminals, and then try to buy a 2 or 4 port dumb serial
card which you should be able to pick up for $40 or so, plus modify
FAS to work with that.  I suspect FAS on a 4 or 8 port dumb board
would outperform the computone.

In a previous incarnation, I designed a 8-port board that didn't have
any of the fancy features, not much memory (the expensive part) and had
termio on the card.  Worked great.  Would have cost only $100-$200.
Too bad the company made only a half-dozen of the things before they
cancelled their UNIX project (and me).
Real fast.
-- 
Chris Lewis, Phone: (613) 832-0541, Internet: clewis at ferret.ocunix.on.ca
UUCP: uunet!mitel!cunews!latour!ecicrl!clewis
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