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Date:      Tue, 14 Apr 1998 15:50:50 -0700
From:      Mike Smith <mike@smith.net.au>
To:        David McNett <nugget@slacker.com>
Cc:        hackers@FreeBSD.ORG, mike@smith.net.au
Subject:   Re: Indus Drivers 
Message-ID:  <199804142250.PAA01253@dingo.cdrom.com>
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Tue, 14 Apr 1998 14:18:12 CDT." <19980414141812.09510@slacker.com> 

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> On 14-Apr-1998, Mike Smith wrote:
> > Try the USR Courier I-modem.
> 
> I have two of these, and have my hands near another one.  In all cases,
> I have had horrific luck getting FreeBSD to play well with the courier.
> This is using byterunner serial ports at 230.4kbps.

Have you tried the internal units?  I have one here but it's the 
International model, and incapable of operating in the USA.

> Under periods of
> heavy inbound traffic, the courier will simply cease processing inbound
> traffic altogether.  No traffic, no blinkenlights, nothing.  The only
> solution I've found when this happens is to powercycle the courier.
> (This on even the most recent courier i-modem firmware from last week)

Bleagh.

> Not that I hold FreeBSD at fault for this, my gut reaction is that it
> is a problem with the courier.  I can reproduce the exact same behavior
> running the same hardware on a Linux box with non-16650 aware
> setserial.  Linux (RH 4.2 to be exact).  However,  with a more recent
> setserial (16650 aware) produces a very solid link that does not
> exhibit this behavior.

This makes it sound like it's a flow-control related issue.  Have you 
tried chaging the receive FIFO settings under FreeBSD?  Have you put a 
serial tester on the line and looked at the status of the flow control 
signals when the USR unit locks up?  Have you pestered USR about this?

> I would love nothing more than to ditch my linux boxes in favour of 
> FreeBSD routers, but do not care to spend any money on additional 
> hardware to accomplish this.
> 
> I bought a gtek 16554 board to experiment with replacing the byterunner
> board, but have since realized that there are no FreeBSD drivers for
> it.

The only 16554 I know of is a 4-port 16550 clone made by Startech.  It 
looks just like 4 separate 16550's.

> Serial i/o is a black art at this level, and I'm well beyond my
> skillset.  Anyone have any recommendations?  What is in sio.c that
> could be triggering this behavior, and what's magic about the newer
> linux setserial code that would somehow rectify the problem?

Differet flowcontrol behaviour is my guess.  If you talk to the USR 
weenies and they complain about not having a test system/not being able 
to reproduce the problem, it might be possible to send them a suitably 
configured system to play with.

-- 
\\  Sometimes you're ahead,       \\  Mike Smith
\\  sometimes you're behind.      \\  mike@smith.net.au
\\  The race is long, and in the  \\  msmith@freebsd.org
\\  end it's only with yourself.  \\  msmith@cdrom.com



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