286 serial port woes

[John Gayman]

In article <11871 at netsys.COM>, len at netsys.COM (Len Rose) writes:
> I am evaluating V/AT 2.4 on an 8 mhz clone 286 with 1 meg
> of ram. Can't reliably sustain a uucp transfer at speeds
> greater than 2400 baud. The system is extremely slow ,and
> 
    [stuff deleted]

> My question is: Is V/AT really this bad,and if so, how can they
> still be in business? I am sure the hardware isn't the blame since
> Xenix performs "acceptably" give the fact that it's just a 286.
> 

     I can't emagine what the problem could be. I don't observe any of
those characteristics here. My configuration is a CompuAdd 8 Mhz 1-wait
state AT-clone, 8-port dumb Digiboard, Telebit Trailblaser Plus, Hayes
SM-2400 and Microport 2.4U. (I'm using 3MB of Ram)

     I have no trouble sustaining two 2400 baud uucp's simultaneously
and doing something else on the console. The only thing I notice is
that when doing a 9600 baud News feed, obviously other serial activity
will cause the modem to pause for a moment and then resume. I have 
also run a 9600 baud direct-wired uucp connection to my 386 machine 
and have no trouble. 

     If I remember correctly when I first got V/AT, I also had only
1MB of Ram. Even running the small kernel the system was very slow
and swapped to disk constantly. I think the single biggest performance
boost you could simply acheive would be another 2MB of Ram. Overall,
in the 2 years I've been running the V/AT system it has proved very
stable (no crashes for months at a time) and met my needs. 


					John



-- 
John Gayman, WA3WBU              |           UUCP: uunet!wa3wbu!john
1869 Valley Rd.                  |           ARPA: john at wa3wbu.uu.net 
Marysville, PA 17053             |           Packet: WA3WBU @ AK3P