PH> While Peter Collis spoke about Modem Speed? to William Brackenridge

PC>If by an 'ordinary serial port' you mean a 16450 or 8250 UART then
PC>you
PC>should be able to run a 28k8 or 33k6 modem without problems as long
PC>as
PC>you don't run a multitasker (win/Desqview/OS2 etc)

 PH>  Get off the grass!

Ahem.

 PH> With a 8250 or 16450 UART he'd be lucky to properly support a V32 modem,
 PH> let alone V34 or V34+ modem!

No, that's not so, Peter; not if you're not running multitasking.  A 10MHz
XT with an 8250 UART (or an AT with a 16450) readily handles a 57600bps
port at sustained rates, though 115200bps tends to be a bit too flakey.

When I first got my 386sx16 in 1991, I tried out a shareware 2-node serial
network called Weaklink, successfully transferring the entire 20Mb from my
existing XT HD to the sx16 at 57600bps from an 8250 UART (averaging about
5kCPS, I recall), with next to no retries at the network driver level.

Multitasking (ie interrupt latency) changes the picture completely,
including some disk caching software on an otherwise non-multitasked PC. 
No way can you run an 8250/16450 UART successfully under Windows or OS/2 or
Desqview, even on a Pentium, but what Peter Collis said is quite correct.

Ian

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