14 Apr
2005
14 Apr
'05
4:52 p.m.
On Thu, 14 Apr 2005 14:52:14 -0700 (PDT)
"Eric Smith" <eric at brouhaha.com> wrote:
Scott wrote:
It's probably a problem with Sun's hardware design. I was trying to get
it up and running at high speed with NetBSD. I remember reading that
there were some 'hacks' to get it running slightly faster than 57,600
baud but only at a few weird non-standard data rates.
The 8530 is a useful part for dedicated purposes,
but isn't it
severely bandwidth cramped?
No, unless you're comparing to Ethernet.
I am thinking that it's the serial chip in
the
Sparcstations, correct me if I'm wrong.
I think you're right.
A few years ago I was pondering
making a 'dialup connecting system with NAT server' out of a
SparcStation Classic (the little lunchbox type Sparc). I discovered
quickly that the serial ports on the Sparc are VERY speed
constrained because of the 8530 chip. It would have been impossible
to connect my USB Courier V-everything modem to it at, say 57,600
baud, because the 8530 just plain won't go that fast.
Sounds like a problem with Solaris. The chip is easily capable of over
1 Mbps. There's a commonplace existence proof of the ability of the
Z8530 to do over 230 Kbps -- that's what was used for LocalTalk
(low-end physical layer of AppleTalk, originally simply called
AppleTalk) on most Macintoshes from 1984 to the mid 1990s.
Eric