Baslinux mailing list

["Samual Acorn" <sam.acorn AT gmail.com>]

On 15/02/07, sindi keesan <keesan AT sdf.lonestar.org> wrote:
> On Thu, 15 Feb 2007, Greg Mayman wrote:
>
> > On Wed, 14 Feb 2007 16:21:48 +0000 (UTC), sindi keesan wrote:
> >
> >> I tested actual speed by downloading a 1MB pdf file from a fast site.
> >> Average speed 2Kbyte/sec = 16 KBit/sec
> >
> > 2kbytes/sec = 20 kbits/sec, as every byte has one start bit and
> > one stop bit added for synchronising purposes, making a total of
> > 10 bits/byte.
>
> Thanks.  Over a 14.4Kilobits/sec connection I was getting up to 1630
> (before the serial port buffer filled up?) falling gradually to 1495
> bytes/sec upload, not 1440 bytes/sec - why?  This comes out closer to 9
> than 10.  Maybe on a longer transfer it would have been 1440 by the end.

the buffer filling and the connect dropping is why i said to use
statserial... it may not be the data stream thats messing up it may be
the hardware handshake lines... CTS/RTS.. that are messing up...
should have said this before tho...

> >
> > I remember this well from the days when we used to make our own
> > 300 baud serial ports and "Kansas City" modems for bulk storing
> > data on audio cassettes.
>
> Out of what?

most likely junk from cermatek

> > .  /     \     from Greg Mayman, in Adelaide, South Australia
> > .  \_,-*_/     "Queen City of The South"    34:55 S  138:36 E
>
> I have been reading on northbridges and southbridges.  Northbridge is
> closest to the cpu.  USB and sound are on the southbridge, which is
> connected to something via a super I/O.  When the hard drive went bad
> maybe it affected the super I/O (tho new hard drives still work fine with
> the controller once you turn on prefetch and block mode).  I think the
> super I/O controls the serial port (which is acting bad).  Floppy
> controller and parallel port act okay. The USB and maybe the onboard sound
> are also bad.  The northbridge handles the faster functions.

the 'super I/O' is the PCI bus.... which is why you have several
different devices on the same chip... or at least it looks to the OS
and northbridge like several different devices...

> The computer with flakey floppy controller (works in DOS, sometimes in
> linux) has a bad serial controller.  Too bad they don't put in enough ISA
> slots any more to replace problems with ISA controller cards.  Another
> computer with failing onboard IDE controller also stopped booting.  Serial
> problems don't usually seem to damage other parts of the board - must be
> lightning striking just that part of it.  So bad-serial computers stay
> fixed once you replace the serial controller.  This 1.2 GHz seems stable
> now apart from modem problems.

it wont stay that way... a bad chip on the PCI bus will ruin the party
for other devices on that bus... including ISA since ISA is treated as
a single device on the PCI bus...

ive made mention of this before giving an example of a multiport card
that was hit by lightning.... the motherboard was fine but the
multiport card wasnt and the damaged card was causing problems with
other cards on the ISA bus... including the NIC... things went back to
normal when the card was removed.... imagine if i relied on  that card
for more than just serial... the machine wouldnt be able to boot....
or if i had that cable connected to the motherboards port... i would
no longer have a computer...


--
--
--sam
--
Web; http://mephitus.no-ip.org/
Skype; Mephitus
ICQ; 51687964
--
"When you've done something right, no one will be sure you've done
anything at all." -- Futurama
--