7 May
2014
7 May
'14
5:17 p.m.
Mouse wrote:
ridiculously high numbers of serial ports. It's
relatively easy to
find 16- or 32-port serial cards for a VAX or the like. It's harder
for a Sun-3/260. It's even more difficult for an Sbus machine like the
SPARCstation-5 he mentioned using. It likely borders on impossible for
the NeXT - I can't recall ever even hearing of add-on serial-line
hardware for any kind of NeXT (though it probably exists). A terminal
server (I don't know why he specified Annex - other people have made
them; perhaps he's got some Annex-specific software in mind) allows,
effectively, putting all those dozen or so modems on any of those
machines relatively easily.
Along those lines, there is a 128-port serial interface for MCA RS/6000s.
Peace... Sridhar