multiport serial board info needed

[Larry Snyder]

gary at mic.UUCP (Gary Lewin) writes:

>The RTS/CTS problem is one that tends to plague many serial board
>manufacturers.  Depending on which drivers are installed, Maxpeed does
>support RTS/CTS but on a shared port basis.  In this configuration, ttyaa
>and ab become one modem port and one 3 wire terminal port (in other words,
>you do completely lose ttyab, just DCD and DTR, which become RTS/CTS for
>ttyaa).

So one port will have the hardware flow control using additional lines
from another port - while the other port (the one who gave up the 
additional lines) becomes a 3 wire terminal port - so if I want to 
support 8 modems, I need 16 ports (if I go with maxspeed) and I am
stuck with 8 terminal ports - even if I don't need them.  

Hmmm..  With my Computone (and from what I hear with the Comtrol
Ultra and latest Digiboard) if I need to support 8 modems, I get
8 ports - not 16.  The Computone works great with hardware flow
control on multiple modems.      

I must be missing something here - I don't see why to buy twice
as many ports as one needs to run hardware flow control..

-- 
       Larry Snyder, Northern Star Communications, Notre Dame, IN USA 
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