Need Recommendations On 386/486 UNIX systems

[Bill Dripps]

In article <358 at metran.UUCP> jay at metran.UUCP (Jay Ts) writes:
>
>One of my clients suffered a direct lightning strike to their building this
>summer.  The computer manager watched the electricity arc across the ceiling.
>The only thing that kept them from being able to do useful work with their
>computer afterwards was a blown multiport I/O card.  When the mp card was
>removed from their system, it booted and ran workably, but of course all of
>their terminals were useless.  I think this sort of situation is what Bill
>is referring to when he says "redundancy says use two".
>
>It's a limitation, of course, if you don't have enough slots, and it's
>probably more expensive, too.  Also, if a 2-card system were hit by lightning,
>maybe both would fail.  Which bridges nicely into my main point.
>
>Arnet reports that 70% of their cards were returned due to surges on the
>serial lines.  Upon inspection, the card referred to above had a (physically)
>blown line driver chip.  Later, we found that a few of the Wyse 60 terminals
>had the same problem (they use the same industry standard chips).
>
>So here's my recommendation:  Arnet now includes port surge protection as
>standard equipment in their multiport cards.  Try the Smartport-16s.
>
>				Jay Ts, Director
>				Metran Technology
>				uunet!pdn!tscs!metran!jay

I must reply to this.

We have two Smartport-16's. They are both on the shelf. They may be
superior electrically - I wouldn't know - but their ISC driver has bugs:

	- Modem control is not correct especially at high speed.
		Expect lots of hung modems and other problems.
	- Transparent print does not work if ioctl's are issued to the
		terminal. For example it will not work with vi or
		ksh. The terminal will hang until the print finishes.
	- SL/IP will not work at all - not supported.

We spent weeks and months with Arnet's tech support trying to get
these bugs fixed. We were shipped several updated drivers. None fixed
these bugs. We were told among other things:

	- We caused the modem problems with improper setup. (Why do
		our modems work with other serial boards? We allowed
		Arnet to dial into our system and set it up their way
		- no improvement)
	- The transparent print problem is a feature! They designed
		the driver to freeze the terminal if the program
		running on the terminal issues an ioctl until the
		print job finishes. This can take a very long time.
	- They had no intention of ever making SL\IP work because ISC
		refused them proper documentation. (Needless to say,
		ISC was appalled at this!)

We finally asked Arnet to honor their "Rock Solid" guarentee and give
us our money back. They refused. Is this the kind of relationship you
want with your vendor?

If all you need is a few 9600 bps terminals Arnet is fine. If you need
more ....

My advice with all serial boards is try before you buy, but no need to
try Arnet! Any rebuttal from Arnet? I will gladly eat this article and
more, if you fix the problems, but I will settle for my money.

Bill Dripps