Here's some recent information that I gathered about selected SBUS
asynchronous serial cards. All of these cards support RTS/CTS
hardware flow control on all ports; anything else is pretty much
worthless nowadays.
mfr model # ports connectors amt merchant phone
Magma LC 2+1 Sp 2 s/1 p DB25 $269 Inmac/Unix Select 800 323 6905
Magma 2+1 Sp 2 s/1 p DB25 359 Inmac/Unix Select 800 323 6905
Magma 4 Sp 4 s RJ45 395 Inmac/Unix Select 800 323 6905
Magma 8 Sp 8 s RJ45 649 Inmac/Unix Select 800 323 6905
Magma 16 Sp 16 s RJ45 1175 Magma 619 457 0750
Magma 4 DMA Sp 4s $625 Magma 619 457 0750
Magma 4 Sync Sp 4s (sync/async) 725 Magma 619 457 0750
Magma 16 DMA Sp 16s 1495 Magma 619 457 0750
Artecon SB-400P 4 s/1 p DB25 (F) $400 SunExpress 800 USE SUNX
Artecon SB-800P 8 s/1 p DB25 (F) 750? Artecon 619 931 5500
Notes: - The price with question mark is a guesstimate.
- No Artecon models other than those listed above support
RTS/CTS hardware flow control on ALL ports.
- The Artecon manuals state that because of small FIFOs,
the cards are not designed to run at high sustained data
rates without imposing a heavy interrupt burden on the CPU.
- The difference between the Magma "LC 2+1 Sp" and "2+1 Sp"
models is 20cps vs 250cps on the parallel port;
the serial ports are otherwise the same on these models.
The Artecon parallel ports are all 20cps.
- The Magma DMA (direct memory access) cards, which include
the "4 Sync Sp" model, are good for situations where the
data coming in aren't flow-controlled, or where the CPU may
be otherwise be heavily burdened.
- The Magma cards go to 115.2Kbps (the DMA cards are faster yet).
The Artecon cards go to 38.4Kbps.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.2 : Fri Sep 28 2001 - 23:09:11 CDT