On Thu, 30 Nov 2000, Dan Field wrote:
>
> > external modems are an issue with older sparcs due to a slow
> > serial port on the sparcs, I dont have the specs but Im sure
> > someone could elaborate on this.
>

 The older SPARCs (and perhaps some of the Ultras?) use a Zilog chip for
serial... great for dumb terminals, great for synchronous communications.
The problem is, the 'popular' modem is asynchronous...

 You can up to 19200 without a hitch (this point is practically
uncontested), now, some others, including myself, will also attest to
being able to reliably do 38400... I have a practical peripherals 33.6
modem that I have used successfully in this scenario.

 However, this is where much of the commonality ends... the Zilog chips
(sorry, I don't have the technical specs to compute the speeds) can do
51200 and 76800 (bps), which are shiny asynchronous modems will not (at
least the majority of)...

 If there is some new form of thinking regarding this, I'd love to hear
it. My experience with modems has been through Debian Linux on my
SPARCstation LX, where the Linux people have said serial support is
rough... I do not know the current status of NetBSD serial support. I'm
told that Solaris support is the best.

 Hope that helps.

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