On Tue, Aug 22, 2000 at 06:32:39AM -0500, Andy Gardner wrote: > In the past I've helped out a Net Cafe in a small town in Mexico get > their dial-up going, so the local people don't get fleeced by the > telco's. > > They were running 2 lines, but now need to expand. Problem is, we > can't locate a dual port serial card locally, and they're not charging > the sort of rate where they can go out and buy a Cyclades multiport > card. > > Does any kind soul out there have a 2 port serial card with 16550's > and the ability to use IRQs 5 and up, just lying around collecting > dust.
i haven't got any spare serial cards, but i can recommend Moxa 8-port dumb cards. i've used several and had no problems with any of them - they just work out of the box. you don't need an expensive smart serial card just to run a few modem lines. any 486 or better is more than capable of driving dozens of dumb serial ports at 115Kbps. even a 386 can do it. they cost about $200 here (australian dollars. $AUD1 ~= $US0.58) and have eight 16550-equivalent serial ports on a single shared IRQ. they're probably cheaper in the US where there's more competition for that kind of thing. they also have a 4-port card, but IIRC it wasn't significantly cheaper. better value for money to get the 8 port. no special drivers needed, the standard linux serial driver works (just recompile the kernel to support more than 4 serial ports, create enough ttyS* devices and configure the port IO addresses with setserial). if that's too expensive, get a multi-function IO card. they usually have 2xserial, 1xparallel, IDE, and maybe a joystick port. set the jumpers to disable everything but the serial ports and change the IO ports & IRQs to avoid conflicts with existing hardware. check the doc for the card before you buy it, not all will let you do this. a dirt cheap solution, the only drawback is that it's not scalable - it uses one IRQ per port, just like ttyS0 and ttyS1 built into the motherboard. not a problem if you don't intend to have more than 4 ports. at a guess, $20 new or $5 on a chuck-out table at your local computer shop or swap-meet. craig -- craig sanders
