Computone/Intelliport device drivers .vs. FAS

[Chip Rosenthal]

In article <1289 at ecicrl.ocunix.on.ca>
	clewis at ferret.ocunix.on.ca (Chris Lewis) writes:
>My remembrance was that:
>    - the snazzy features (transparent print thru and the other gunge)
>      are useless.
	   ^^^^^^^?

I think `dangerous' is the correct word.  My experience has been that
Computone cards irrevocably lockup eventually if you don't disable all
that stuff in the /etc/ic_control (or whatever it's called) file.

I never could figure out how they got so popular - they don't work.

My opinion is that half the crap serial card vendors put into their boards
and drivers don't belong there.  Multiple tty's, transparent print,
keyboard mapping and the like should be performed on the system through
pty's and line disciplines and stream modules.  Even though this gunk is
totally wrong, rude, and crude - I still tend to use them.  You know...too
lazy to write a transparent print daemon which does it correctly :-)

I've found, as a rule, Digiboard and Equinox tend to understand what is
needed for a UNIX system, and have had good results with both vendors.
The Equinox scheme for full modem control is a bit screwey, but it's
probably a reasonable tradeoff for the port density you get.  Both vendors
also seem to have good support behind their boards, and I feel comfortable
recommending them.  Neither vendor is cheap - but if you want cheap you
should be getting a dumb card, populating it with 16550's, and running
FAS.  In intelligent serial cards, my experience is that cheap buys you
broke.

-- 
Chip Rosenthal  512-482-8260  |
Unicom Systems Development    |    I saw Elvis in my wtmp file.
<chip at chinacat.Unicom.COM>    |