Hi there, On Fri, 8 Feb 2002, Constantine Evans wrote:
> I am attempting to allow the use of multiple Biomek 1000s > (robots from the 1980s) on a Linux system. Biomek 1000s use serial > ports for communication. I was told by a Beckman technician that > these biomeks would not run using a 486 with a cpu speed higher than > around 50Mhz. This is probably a gross oversimplification of the limitations. There have been many problems with serial communications, largely because it's a tricky area to get just right (especially on the PC clone architecture) and also because there have been several variations on the device which does the parallel to serial conversion - the UART - and you're never really sure what you've got until you put it through some hoops. Talking about the speed of the processor might be a way of saying that you're likely to have a more or less recent UART, which may or may not have a FIFO buffer, which may or may not be properly handled by the code (especially if it's old code which was written way back before you could buy a UART with a FIFO). > However, the computer I am using is a 586 AMD at 300 Mhz. Therefore, > although I can get the computer to communicate with the machine by > entering the correct port and interrupt numbers in the configuration > file, the machine does not work because it becomes overloaded. If the software is properly written, the computer speed should be irrelevant. After all, my serial terminals still work on my GHz PCs... > Therefore, I would like to be able to run dosemu with a > different cpu speed than my actual cpu. Is this possible? I think it might be better to try to sort out why the speed is an issue in the first place. If you are using DOS-based software which was provided with the robots you might not be able to do anything about it in there, but if all else fails you should be able to slow down the rate at which serial transfers are attempted by the PC without resorting to slowing the processor down - you might as well go out and buy an old PC from a junk shop! Find out more. 73, Ged. - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-msdos" in the body of a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
