Subject: Re: UARTs, was : Re 2nd update

From: Carlo J. Calica <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 23 Jun 93 22:14:51 CDT

> > I just called the local national semi office and distributor : 
> > 
> > 1.  National Semi doesn't make a four UART version of the 16550
> > 
> > 2.  Here are the stats on the 2-port version : 
> > 
> > National Semi NS16C552V dual 16550 UART
> > 
> > Lots of 100 : $13.10
> 
> Sounds like we have our serial chip...
> 
Please be sure to use two for a total of 4 UARTs.  I'd like as many as
possible to hang terminals off of.

--
 /------------------------------+--------------------------------------\
| Carlo J. Calica               | Linux:  Choice of the GNU Generation  |
|     [email-masked]       | Dittos from the People's              | 
 \ University of Wisconsin      | Republic of Madison                  /

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From: Willy Konijnenberg <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 24 Jun 93 11:05:50 +0200

> possible to hang terminals off of.

Why would you want to put UARTs on the motherboard?  They don't consume
enough I/O bandwidth to justify hooking them up to the local bus.
If you include too many fancies, the board gets more complicated and
more expensive than it needs to be.
Better stick to things that need the bandwidth, like SCSI, ethernet, video.
If you want 16552 UARTs, build a simple ISA board with 4 sockets for them.

Not that my views are relevant, of course, as I am not going to design
the board, and very possibly won't even buy one.

-- 
	Willy Konijnenberg <[email-masked]>
	Department of Mathematics & Computer Science,
	Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
 "You don't want to get locked into open systems" -- IBM

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From: [email-masked] (Neil Russell)
Date: Fri, 25 Jun 93 9:44:18 PDT

> If you want 16552 UARTs, build a simple ISA board with 4 sockets for them.

Yup, but its much easier to debug the ISA bus hardware when you can
talk to the CPU.  Also, almost everyone will use at least one serial port
with this (for a mouse for X); I think it's justified.

-- 
Neil Russell		(The wizard from OZ)
Pyramid Technology			Email:  [email-masked]
3860 N. First Street			Voice:  (408) 428-7302
San Jose, CA 95134-1702			  FAX:  (408) 428-8845