On Tuesday August 27 1996, William Brackenridge wrote to All ...

 WB> I have a 386 with an ordinary Serial Port.

Yuck. By "ordinary", I take it that you mean you have a 1-byte
8250 UART chip fitted to your serial card. Not good enough these days.

 WB> Currently, I have a 2400 modem and I am thinking of buying a faster one.
 WB> Could anyone tell me the maximum speed of modem which would work with my
 WB> computer.

Your computer doesn't bear any significance on the speed of the modem you
can use with it; it's your serial card that you need to worry about.
Chances are that yours contains an 8250 or 16450 (note the 4) UART onboard.

If you intend to buy a fast modem, and especially if you run a
multi-tasking environment of some sort, you will want a new serial card
which contains a 16550AFN UART. This is a 16-byte buffered chip, and will
make an *enormous* difference. It should only set you back $40 or so.

John (japp{at}mpx.com.au)

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