1237a5f8497e
tech



Hello Jim - 

JH> Hello, Charles. Thanks for your response as we were trying
JH> to help Wayne C. by giving our best advice. 

As was I. 

--8<--cut 

JH>> In any event, if what the Pentium board has is only 8250
JH>> or compatible/emulated, I think no need to hurry to buy an
JH>> external 56K serial modem, as TBOMK the 8250 won't support
JH>> that speed. Corrections welcomed, if I'm wrong. 

JH> BTW, I didn't really suspect his pentium board had an 8250.
JH> Turns out Wayne says the 8250 is on one of his 486 boards,
JH> per his subsequent post. 

CA>> Seems like 'baiting' here to me but ... 

JH> You? Baiting? Noooooooooooo! 

Reverse that. Someone trying to bait me. ;-) 

CA>> At the speed of that CPU I would guess at the very least
CA>> the UARTs are 16450s or even 16550s (no 'A')? This would
CA>> be shabby business practices IMO but I can imagine some
CA>> manuf did try to sneak the plain 16550s through to save
CA>> that 'nickel' they squeeze so very tightly. :-\ 

JH> If so, probably for price competition in the consumer
JH> market. 

CA>> AFAIK the 8250, 16450, and 16550 (no 'A') are more or less
CA>> the same in terms of performance. MSD.EXE from Wayne's W31
CA>> OS should tell him what they are? I've tested both the
CA>> 8250 and 16450 and they will support 57600 using a null
CA>> modem cable between the serial ports and GSZ as the
CA>> application software doing the transfers with zero resends. 

JH> Well, a direct connection via null modem cable is one
JH> thing, but as you say - - 

The 'connect' to an external modem is no more, no less a cable
than the null modem cable. Once connected the modem handles the
'traffic' from that point outward. 

CA>> If, as is the prevailing wisdom, a locked 115200 was
CA>> attempted then all bets are off as these UARTs might error
CA>> out frequently which means any compression to achieve
CA>> random speed 'bursts' wouldn't happen for the 56k modem
CA>> which is never really at 56k anyhow. We all know that the
CA>> FCC has limited us to 53k at most and typical connects are
CA>> 40-44k to the ISP using POTS lines? 

CA>> When using a browser these speed bursts are handy for the
CA>> HTML (text) portion of the webpages, for downloading files
CA>> not so. Most application software files are compressed
CA>> into an archive and maintain a certain average speed
CA>> thoughout the entire download. 

CA>> This slight variation when browsing may not be significant? 

JH> Unclear to me- are you saying that my advice to Wayne that
JH> 8250 UART chip won't support 56K external modem (knowing he
JH> intends to use Windows and/or Linux and surf the web)
JH> wasn't good advice, and you think the 56K external modem
JH> would work OK for him in that application? 

Yes, I'm saying it will work. 

JH> But all of our advice on this is pretty much moot now,
JH> since Wayne is so tickled with the Celeron 433 and Pentium
JH> machines he now has. My guess is that he'll never make it
JH> back to working with the Packard Bell 486 mainboards. 

May as well thrash it out for the lurkers. 

CA>> Judging by server stats from my music webpage almost 50%
CA>> of all who frequent that webpage are on DSL connects which
CA>> is another excuse for neglecting to put in 16550As? Serial
CA>> ports are dropping in significance lately. 

JH> Your music webpage caters to the carriage trade? (aka the
JH> rich)? :-). 

No, not intentionally. Just happens those with DSL seem more
interested in streaming music files for some odd reason? 

JH> Both my kids have DSL now, and it sure is _fast_ compared
JH> to my setup. I keep waiting for the price of the DSL
JH> service to come down, but it doesn't seem to be coming down
JH> much. 

I don't need it and probably wouldn't really use it for much of
anything. If someone gives it to me I'll take it but I won't
promise to stress it much while it's here. 

JH> Yep, with so many peripherals going to USB now, and with
JH> mouse on a PS/2 port, and I suspect a very small % of users
JH> wanting an external modem, it may not be long before
JH> onboard serial ports are eliminated, and those who want
JH> them would have to put in an expansion card, as we did for
JH> so many years. Heck, they could do away with parallel port
JH> too, and use USB for the printer. Seems to me the way the
JH> industry is going, with USB moving to standard printer
JH> interface, and parallel port maybe moving to an "option"
JH> which might be eliminated before much longer. 

USB 2 being 40x faster than USB 1 does seem a strong selling
point. I've never liked the clunky serial port or parallel port
connectors anyhow. ;-) 

 >
>        ,                          ,
>      o/      Charles.Angelich      \o       ,
>       __o/
>     / >          USA, MI           < \   __\__
 

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