Submission for comp-unix-microport

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Date: 26 Mar 88 07:15:53 GMT
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From: ewv at violet.berkeley.edu (Eric Varsanyi )
Newsgroups: comp.unix.microport
Subject: Intelliport multi-port board comments
Keywords: serial port Computone Intelliport hosed review
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Date: 26 Mar 88 06:33:08 GMT
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Reply-To: ewv at violet.berkeley.edu (Eric Varsanyi )
Organization: Cray Research, Inc.
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	I recently had the "pleasure" of installing an 8 port Intelliport
board on my uport 386 system, here are a few hints and tips in case anyone
out there is evaluating this product for their system:

General info
------------

	The Computone Intelliport is a 4, 8 or 16 port intelligent serial
board. Up to 4 boards can be installed in a system, giving a theoretical
maximum of 64 ports. The board has an 80186 and some RAM, therefore it
handles all the per character interrupts and only has to interrupt the
386 for full lines of input (At least I hope that's what they did in their
driver, anything else would be a waste. Their manual is devoid of any useful
technical information).

	They have a feature that allows you to use terminals with 2 pages of
memory like the console (you can switch between the two pages and have
different sessions on each one). I've been using this feature and its real 
handy, there are two entries in /dev for the two virtual screens so its
reasonably transparent to the system. It is possible to confuse the terminal
and end up with the output getting sent to the wrong screens. This feature
is completely programmable, so you can set up any terminal with two pages
of memory (that will switch on some command received from the serial port) to
work with this feature.

	They also have a feature that lets you use the printer port on a
terminal via another entry in /dev that is more or less transparent to the 
terminal user.

	The overall quality of the hardware is good, the board and cables
are sturdy. The jumpers are located so that you have to take the board out
of the system to get to them (they are down near the edge connector).

Problems installing on uport V386
---------------------------------

1) DosMerge does not work

	The sales people at Computone claim that you can run applications
such as Wordstar and Paradox. The tech support people claim (correctly) that
the board does not work with DosMerge applications.

2) There is no modem arbitration

	There is no arbitration between ttyixx and ttymxx lines (like there
are between tty00 and ttym00 under the standard uport serial driver), therefore
you have to resort to various bogus methods to have a port usable for dialin
and also be able to use it for tip or kermit. (Edit inittab each time, use
(blech!) uugetty, etc...)

3) No working terminfo entries are supplied

	Computone tech support recommends that you use their product with
a Wyse 60 terminal, they supply termcap entries (!) to use their board
with a Wyse 60 (the regular one does not work). Since System V does not
support termcap, this does not work too well. Tech support informs me that
no terminfo entries are currently available, and that I use the terminal
in TVI925 mode (Good thing I got this nice AT compatible keyboard for
my Wyse terminal). There are other problems with Wyse 60 mode as well. (later)
I tried to use captoinfo to convert the termcap entry to a terminfo entry with
marginal success, the resulting terminfo entry works ok until you hit ESC
twice in a row, then you end up getting hex representations of what you
type echoed back at you (from god knows where). There's no way out of this,
you have to kill the vi or whatever you were running.

4) The driver hangs intermittently

	If a port is opened and there is no board present (the install script
creates /dev/ entries for all possible 64 ports, even if you only have 8),
the process opening will hang (at some wait channel in the driver) until
system reboot. This also happens if you access a port and there is no
terminal plugged into it.

5) Terminals that produce scancodes do not work

	Scancode producing terminals (Wyse 60's for instance) will not work
with this product. Turning on scancode recognition has no effect. (Note: You
can still use a Wyse 60 or Kimtron but you have to put it in ASCII mode)

6) Can only be installed on IRQ15

	If you have something that uses IRQ15 (like DosMerge) you are out
of luck (This is NOT documented, their tech support told me).

7) Poor Documentation

	The documentation was written for SCO Xenix, one page was added
with uport and VP/ix installation instructions. Their install scripts
build your kernel from system.std (if you are using something else you
are out of luck and have to manually install).

8) Tech Support not available for users

	Their tech support is not available to end users, you are
directed to call your dealer. The dealer cannot get tech support
either, he is directed to call his distributor. The distributor can
call Computone with technical questions. Most distributors have a nice
warehouse and order taking department. Need I say more?

Conclusions
-----------

	The concept and hardware are excellent. The software implementation
for uport (and for vp/ix systems I suspect) is poor. The system will not
install out of the box without a good deal of tinkering. They claim that
all the above problems will be solved with their next revision of the driver
that should be out in about a month. Considering the quality of the software
and the skill of the tech support department with uport systems, I would
judge this to be an immature product for uport systems, not to be bought
unless you are willing to tinker around quite a bit and lose some of the
functionality of your hardware. The tech support person stated that their main
market place was Xenix and maybe they had jumped into the uport and vp/ix
markets too early, I agree.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Eric Varsanyi                                        ewv at violet.berkeley.edu
                                                     !ucbvax!violet!ewv
   Any opinions expressed are mine and are not necessarily those of Cray
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