On Mar 03 08:11:49, n...@holland-consulting.net wrote: > > Anyway, waht is it that makes the new com(4)s > > hang on 'ttyflags -a' at rc(8) time? > > > > Jan > > I've seen this behavior on some rather attractive priced 8 port PCI > serial cards which attached as puc(4). What I found is that they hung > on Piii-class machines, but "worked" on P4 machines, at least until > realized the P4 was sucking huge amounts of power, fans running at full > speed, pumping out lots of heat, and showing huge interrupt loads when > the machine was idle, and removing the 8 port card eliminated the > problems. > > Heh. From memory, I think those were NetMos based cards, too. > > So, it seems some puc(4) devices end up causing horrible interrupt > storms. > > There ARE two port PCI cards that work just fine. So I'd suggest > trying other cards if two ports is all you need.
Would you please recommend a particular one, or even the dmesg lines? > In a project where I wanted some serial consoles on a remote system, > and was told "don't do puc(4)", I ended up using a USB to 8-serial port > device -- I think we were able to get this for under $150US. Here's > how it shows in dmesg, attached to an Alix system: > [...] > Bad news: we HAVE had problems with the device locking up. Now, our > machine with the eight port USB->serial device is devoted to being > the serial console for five other machines, so a quick reboot when we > need console is no big deal, and this fixes the port lockups. But if > you are hoping an important production machine can ALSO be the console > for other important machines...this is probably not your best choice. This is my home workstation from which I want to connect to my two ALIXes. Thanks for the insight Jan