Date: Mon, 13 Oct 2003 06:44:41 -0700 (PDT) From: Jamie Bowden <ragnar@sysabend.org> To: "C. Stephen Gunn" <csg@waterspout.com> Cc: hardware@FreeBSD.org Subject: Re: PCI-X Multiport Serial cards. Message-ID: <20031013063509.E20891-100000@moo.sysabend.org> In-Reply-To: <20031012140627.GA85255@waterspout.com>
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On Sun, 12 Oct 2003, C. Stephen Gunn wrote: > Jamie Bowden (ragnar@sysabend.org) likely uttered: > > Does anyone have any experience with PCI-X multiport serial cards > > under FreeBSD (4 or 5, either is fine)? I've got a 1u Dell machine > > that in 3 weeks will lose it's current role in life, and I'd like to > > use it as a console server for a bunch of headless SGI and Sun boxes. > > Its only expansion slot is PCI-X. If anyone can recommend a known > > working card with at least 8 ports, I'd appreciate it. > First I think that PCI-X is just 133Mhz by 64-bit PCI. You should be > bacward compatible. Regular PCI is perfect for nearly anything you > might want to do. And this machine clearly has the muscle to be one > heck of a nice conserver. PCI-X is a different form, a standard PCI card will not fit and line up with the edge of the case (I found this out when I tried to add a parallel port to the machine, a plain jane PCI parallel card didn't fit). > You might check out the PCI boards from Cyclades. I've used both > the Cyclom-Y and Cyclom-Z board successfully under FreeBSD. I did > have some trouble with Cyclom-Y under 4.X and reverted to 2.2.8 > to run it (It was 3 years ago so I can't be sure). I'll have to check with Cyclades and see if they are selling PCI-X form cards yet. Has anyone tried any of the Cyclades cards under 5.x? This machine would be tracking RELENG_5_1 initially, and 5-S once it migrates from 4. > You might also look into the 1-U rackmount products from Lantronix > or Cyclades. A private Ethernet segment is nearly as good as > a custom interconnect to the server. I have network access to the machines in question now; the plan is to have their consoles available to me from my desk via ssh or a remote location (this machine will have a modem on it in case the network is down and I need to get in). I've considered using an old portmaster 2e, but it doesn't do ssh. Currently I just have an old Wyse term that I shuffle cables around on depending on which machine I need console access to. > KS Braunsdorf's variant of conserver we run at work knows how > to talk directly to a tcp/ip destination, you just spell the > serial device differently in conserver.cf. I'm not sure about > the ports, or comserver.com variants of conserver, but it wouldn't > surprise me if they supported it too. > > The machine you have could easily handle 2-3 Muxes, so you > have plenty of room to grow. Plus you can easily drop a second > machine on the black network and not be dead if the conserver > has a hardware issue, either. :) > > - Steve > Jamie Bowden -- "It was half way to Rivendell when the drugs began to take hold" Hunter S Tolkien "Fear and Loathing in Barad Dur" Iain Bowen <alaric@alaric.org.uk>
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