Re: Dual port serial card?

[gdr@eddore.myrias.com (Devin Reade)]

In article <514v1h$75l@wraith.cs.uow.edu.au>,
David E A Wilson <david@wraith.cs.uow.edu.au> wrote:
>
>Are people still interested in such a card? Cirrus Logic has a nice 4 port
>chip with builtin PPP support - just the ticket for the following:
>
>>Maybe if TCP/IP for GNO/ME ever comes out the demand for such a card
>>of the type I just described would be justify its creation.

Over a year ago (two years?) someone was actually designing a multiport
board.  I don't recall who it was, but we haven't heard anything after
what appeared to be the initial design stage.  I seem to recall that
there were two tenative plans for that card; one with four ports, one
with 16.  I would still have the relevent articles in archive, somewhere.

I say again what I said then:  I would pay hard cash for such a card,
even if initially there aren't any drivers for it (assuming that
sufficient documentation is provided).  I don't mind buying Apple II
hardware on spec if it means that someone is going to build it.  (I'm
a software man; I gave up on hardware when SMT came out, so _I_ can't
build it.)

I think that 16 ports is excessive although I wouldn't complain about
it.  Four ports are optimal, and I could get by on two (on the same
card).  Regarding available baud, I wouldn't want the card to be
the bottleneck on an accelerated IIgs.  A small on-board cache
would be desirable.

One assumption is, of course, that the card doesn't use up any slot
assignments other than it's own.  One that can operate when the
control panel is _not_ set to "Your Card" would the best, unless
doing so makes a big performance hit.

-- 
	Devin Reade	gdr@eddore.myrias.ab.ca