Summary: 4-port cards

[Dave McLane]

Here is a summary of what I found out regarding 4 port cards. It's
a pretty long story but has a happy ending ... at least I'm real
happy with the way it turned out!

----- First my requirements may be a bit different than you're
used to, so to forestall confusion:

 1. I'm in Japan and cannot call 800 numbers except by contracting
    with a independent company which charges a fortune for small
    fry like me.

 2. Hanging around on the phone negotiating voice menus and leaving
    messages for callbacks that never occur is an expensive proposition
    from Japan.

 2. Some (about 50% according to my experience) companies won't
    sell to Japan; either not at all or only via their dealer who
    typically charges 2X-3X the price. Charging 2X-3X the price is
    quite reasonable considering what it costs to do business here,
    but I don't have that kind of money for the kind of system I
    need so I'm trying to pull a rabbit out of a hat, so to speak.

 3. Some companies (about 75% according to my experience) are
    simply unable to deal with international shipments. One notable
    exception is Programmer's Connection which knows what they're
    doing; one notable example could not physically write my
    address + fax + tel (which is the de facto standard in Japan) as
    American-style addresses are built into their "state-of-the-art" LAN.

    FYI, the reason tel/fax is necessary here is because there are
    no street numbers. What looks like a street number is only the
    plot registry number and there are 4-5 separate houses who
    share my number. The only way to find out where I am physically
    located is to have a map and I keep one ready to fax off to
    people when they can't find my place. Luckily I live near a
    major hospital so when people/cab drivers/delivery people
    can't find my house I ask them to go to the hospital and
    I walk over and point out where I live.

 4. My saving grace is that I've been able to set up a DOS-based
    JUNET/USENET-linked system which allows me to connect with
    people. Otherwise I'd be dead because because I don't know
    anybody else doing what I'm trying to do in Japan (set up a ISC
    UNIX 2.2 on a Dell 386 to run as multi-line quasi-public access
    UNI site).

----- Considering all that, the practical aspects of actually
getting something that works is a major consideration. As long as
it works, and is reasonably priced (taking into consideration the
cost of the phone calls and shipping) I'm happy enough. Here's
what kind of help/info I got:

1. INTEL 6-port ICC card.

   This is the card that I couldn't get to work and Tracy Riley at
   INTEL says that they no longer make/support this board...

2. Computer Hot Line (ads from resellers) and Computer Shopper (PC
   parts/software) are said to be invaluable.

   I don't get these mags and the person I know who used to gave up 
   as they are pretty expensive here in Japan so I didn't follow up
   on this...

3. HUB-6, originally by Bell Tech, then acquired by INTEL.

   I couldn't get the address/telco/fax of any place that had one
   for sale...

4. Computer Discount Warehouse. They say they can get the AST-4
   board for me for $284. About two weeks delivery.

   Again, no address...

5. JDR Microdevices in San Jose sell a 4 port card under the "MCT"
   (Modular Circuit Technology) brand name that is an AST 4 port
   clone. Make sure you ask for the "multiuser" card - they also
   have some other dumb 4 port cards that are not AST clones.

   Again, no address...

6. Advanced Computer Products, 1310 E. Edinger, Santa Ana, CA
   92705, 800 FONE ACP/(800 3663227) 714 558 8813 was advertising
   an AST 4-Port/XN for $99.

   I called voice and talked to Bezar who said they had the card at 
   that price. Since my address is pretty horrible to say over the 
   phone ("Minami", 'm', 'i', 'n'...) I faxed my order/address/VISA
   card immediately after the voice call. No reply. No reply to a
   follow-up fax sent a week later....

7. DFI MU-440 board (AST-4 clone) for $139.  Be sure you specify
   the DFI MU-440 board, as DFI makes other 4-port boards.  The
   MU-440 (MU=multi-user) is the AST-4 clone; others are for DOS
   and while the four ports share a single interrupt, they assume
   that only one port will be active at any time.  The board comes
   with four um82450 uarts. Two are socketed, two are not.  Altex
   Electronics, Inc., 11342 IH-35 North, San Antonio, TX 78233
   +1-512-637-3200 (voice), +1-512-344-2985 (fax), (800) 531-5369.

   You can buy NS16550AFNs from Altex Electronics.  At $19.95 each, 
   they are a bit more expensive than some other places.  They are 
   also available ($14.95, they say) from: JDR Microdevices, 2233
   Branham Lane, San Jose, CA 95124, +1-408-559-1200 (voice),
   +1-408-559-0250 (fax), (800) 538-5000.

   I didn't try them as I already had something going (see next).

8. Decision-Computer International Co. Ltd. 4/F No. 31-3, Alley 4,
   Lane 906, Ming Shen East Road, Taipei, Taiwan, R.O.C. Tel:
   +886-2-766-5753, Fax: +886-2-766-5702. Contact is Casper Chang.

   They stock and ship (almost) immediately by speed post the
   following items:

   PC COM 2 port card with 16550 chips    US$44.00
      This card takes two slots, one for
      the board and one for the second
      25 pin female connector.

   PC COM 4 port card with 16500 chips    US$98.00
      This card takes one slot and uses a
      52 pin -> cable with 4 X 25 pin
      female connectors.

   PC COM device driver for AT&T/ISC UNIX US$25.00
      Works OK with regular logins, but
      not VP/ix (see next).

   Female-Female gender-benders           US$ 6.00
      Standard 25 pin cables in Japan
      come with male connectors at both
      ends, thus I got 6 gender-benders.

   I am running both the 2 port card and the 4 port card on my Dell
   system 333D (386 33MHz) with ISC 2.2 and they work well; see
   next for details.

----- Installing the PC COM cards was fairly straightforward, all
things considered. I used XU (comes as part of the X00 FOSSIL
driver for DOS) to check the cards, installed the PC COM -> FAS
2.0.8 drivers, and checked the system with u396mon.

1. Installed the 2-port card as COM1/COM2 (IRQ 4/3) and run XU.EXE
   and verified that the chips were functioning correctly as FIFO
   buffered devices.

2. Installed the 4-port card as COM1/COM2/COM3/COM4 (IRQ 4/3) and
   run XU.EXE and verified that the chips were functioning
   correctly as FIFO buffered devices.

3. The 4-port card can be configured as a) COM1-COM4, b) COM1-COM2
   + 2 additional ports, c) 4 additional ports. Installed the
   2-port card as COM1/COM2 and the 4-port card as 4 additional
   ports running on IRQ 9 (IRQ2 on board; don't ask me about it,
   but it works OK).

4. Installed the PC COM drivers which worked OK except they 
   exhibited the same behavior as the standard ISC asy drivers: if 
   the carrier goes down when in VP/ix, all processes for that 
   login remains online and whoever called in became whoever was on
   before. (A useful "feature", but I didn't need it :-)

5. The PC COM stuff comes with some source code to test out various
   things (although no source code for the ISC drivers) and it looked
   quite similar to the way the FAS 2.0.8 driver worked with the AST
   4-port card so, just for fun, I installed FAS as if the PC COM
   4-port was the AST 4-port and everything worked well!

   Note: I've sent the source for FAS 2.0.8 to Casper Chang at
   Decision and hopefully they will do something useful with it.

6. Ran many tests using u386mon to monitor how much of the CPU time
   was being used. Sample test: 3 channels all downloading at
   19,200 BPS take approximately 6% of the time (7% showing less
   the 1% used by u386mon).

7. I've also installed GETTY 2.0 which allows me init the modem
   plus change speed on login to whatever the modem reports
   (including locking the port if needs be via some
   working-but-butchered additions of my own).

I'm pretty happy with the set up, considering that I only had
to shell out a couple of hundred bucks for the hardware plus
another hundred dollars or so faxing the U.S./Taiwan.

----- The total package I'm running includes:

  1. PC COM 4-port card & PC COM 4-port card from Decision.

  2. XU.EXE from X00V124.ZIP (DOS executable).

  3. FAS 2.0.8 (UNIX source)

  4. GETTY 2.0 (UNIX source).

  5. U386MON (UNIX source).

I'm not about to try and e-mail this stuff but if anybody wants it
I'd be willing to put it on a MS-DOS 2D 5.25" floppies and send
snail mail it to you if you would send me a self-addressed envelope
and, say, US$5.00 to cover the cost of the disks and postage.

Many thanks to all the people who help me on this, especially Dave
Goodman <misty!daveg at uunet.uu.net), Larry Snyder <larry at nstar.rn.com>
and Mike Squires (mikes at iuvax.cs.indiana.edu).

--Dave McLane <davidg%aegis.or.jp> JUNET
              <davidg%aegis.or.jp at kyoto-u.ac.jp> INTERNET
              <davidg%aegis.or.jp at jpnkyoto.kyoto-u.ac.jp> BITNET
              <davidg%aegis.or.jp%yoto-u.ac.jp at uunet.uu.net> via UUNET

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