12 Nov
1999
12 Nov
'99
3:43 a.m.
On Fri, 12 Nov 1999 12:22:05 -0500 Ram Meenakshisundaram
<rmeenaks(a)olf.com> wrote:
I was just looking over Sundance's Serial TRAM and
it doesnt even use a
transputer. It just uses C011s to handle the links.
That was one of the designes that we looked at...
Wouldnt that be easier???
It depends... Wasn't that the one with the Z80 on it? And
some firmware in ROM?
There would be no need to get any spare transputers
(and
they are hard to source these days). The SMT220 seems to
be a very easy design.
It's also a very inflexible one in that, without a
transputer, you can't download code to it and implement any
intelligence in the serial TRAM. The big advantage of a
transputer directly connected to a UART is that you can
load it with code to do buffering, timeouts, time-stamping,
protocol conversion -- anything you want in fact!
As John said, it would be really neat if it can
handle
modems, etc like a true PC-based serial port...
Modem control lines were essential in our application (not
for a modem, but for RS-485 support). But I wouldn't call
the PC's serial port "true", either...
--
John Honniball
Email: John.Honniball(a)uwe.ac.uk
University of the West of England