Re: A multiport serial board would be nice...

[david@zircon.cs.uow.edu.au (David E A Wilson)]

Jason Jeffries <jxj119@email.psu.edu> writes:
>Well, wouldn't it? I'd like to have more serial ports without filling my GS
>up with SuperSerial cards. Is anyone still working on a multiport serial
>card?

Leslie M. Barstow III <wdphoenix@delphi.com> writes:
>I think a multi-port card would be great!  It's one of the few things really
>missing in order to set up a cool BBS system :)
>Anyone game for making it?  I'm not a hardware guru.

OK, assuming I was game to design this, the following questions come to mind:

1)	How many ports would you want? Using Dual ACIA chips I think 8 would
	be quite possible.

2)	What serial chip would you want used? z8530, R65c52 are dual ACIA chips.
	Alternatively 65c51 chips could be used with less ports available.

3)	How many handshake lines would you want per port?

4)	Should the card have any firmware? The Basic & Advanced (Pascal 1.1)
	firmware interfaces really only support one port.

5)	What sort of connector(s) should the card have for the serial ports?

6)	How would you like to buy it? a) bare board. b) fully assembled.
	c) other.

7)	How much would you be prepared to pay for this card? How many would
	you buy?

Would anyone who is interested in such a card e-mail your answers and any
other suggestions you have on the subject to david@cs.uow.edu.au. I will
summarise the responses I get.