Manuel Bouyer <bouyer@antioche.lip6.fr> writes:

> On Tue, Jul 25, 2000 at 02:14:47PM -0600, Chris Jones wrote:
> > I'm trying to use an 8-port BocaBoard in 1.5_ALPHA on i386, and I'm
> > not having much luck.  I was wondering if anybody else had had any
> > success with these.  I think my next step is to downgrade to 1.4 and
> > see if that works.
> 
> I have a 16-ports one working, which uses the same driver as the 8-port one:

Is this on a 1.5 or currentish machine?

> I use it for servers serial consoles.

Heh; that's what I'll be using mine for, too.  We need a *reliable*
machine to provide console services for our linux boxes.

Incidentally, we're using an Intel L440GX+ motherboard (from VA Linux,
actually) for these Linux boxes.  It has an "Emergency Management
Port" (EMP), which is a serial port with a dedicated, always-powered
circuit attached to it.  The EMP can power-up, power-down, and reset
the system, as well as tell you the fan speed and CPU temperature.
There's some Windows software you can get to run it, and VA Linux also
makes something called VACM that'll run under Linux.  This is what I'm
running on my NetBSD box, under COMPAT_LINUX.  The big drawbacks are
that it won't run unless it's under X, and it's linked against gtk.
So I'm going to be running an X server using vnc, which I can then
attach to.  The code is not, IMHO, well-written -- it did not want to
compile under NetBSD, and it has some gnarly Linux dependencies in it.
But it works.

> I implemented a workaround, which is to periodically call comintr() for each
> serial port; this seems to have prevented the hangs that would otherwise
> make the board unusable.

I'll try that out; thanks.

Chris

-- 
-----------------------------------------------------chris@cjones.org
Chris Jones                                          cjones@honors.montana.edu
           Mad scientist at large
"Is this going to be a stand-up programming session, sir, or another bug hunt?"