[EMAIL PROTECTED] says: >>I've got an intel based Debian box, and an m68k (Atari Falcon), also running >>Linux. I'd liked to connect them using ppp or plip, but the bigger box has >>all serial and paralel ports ocupied (mouse, modem, printer). So I decided >>to purchase a card giving me an additional paralel and two serial ports. This >>was the only card I could find after looking for a month, it's no-name, w/o >>any kind of manual (just a jumper-charts regarding the i/o addresses), >>and the vendor hasn't got an idea. >> >Ciccio, > One thing you might try, is to use one of the new serial ports as >cua2 (DOS COM3) and disable the fourth one (at least for now). The new >parallel should be OK as LPT2.
You're right; the new parallel port works OK. The problem is that the Triton II motherboard, it's bios , plug and pray facilities, or something else, is changing the I/O and IRQ's everytime I set up something. My Soundblaster was on IRQ 5, and suddently I had to recompile the kernel because I found it again in IRQ10. Also, when I uninstalled the new card, I expected to get the old configuration back; but at the first moment, I couldn't find neither the mouse nor the modem port. I played a while, cat'ing things to the device, and using chat and `dip -t', and at a certain moment I got the modem port where it was. Then I started X, but there was no mouse. I kept playing the same way, and finally found the mouse too on the original port. I didn't touch any of the device files, setserial, which eventually could explain to me this behaviour (because I wouldn't know how to do it). > I use that very same setup on my machine >here. You also have an Atari Falcon connected? > COM4 is sometimes troublesome because of interference caused by the >video cards, especially if your I/O cards are a mix of 8 and 16 bit variety. >The reason is this: the older 8 (and many 16 bit for that matter) only decode >the lower 12 bits of the I/O address! Ever notice how the doc's will sometimes >show them as x3e8! That 'x' represents the top 4 bits of the I/O address, that >for most older cards is "a don't care"! Well, the newer cards DO care! As >they fully decode the I/O address (all sixteen bits are significant). This mix >of cards that fully decode the address, and those that don't, create the issue. >For example; one card may be set at 03e8, and another at 13e8, and guess what? >The old card will see both addresses as the same! Since it doesn't look at the >upper four bits, it doesn't have any way of knowing that it is NOT the correct >address (it thinks it is its own address anyway). In my case, with my COM3, I >set it to IRQ 5 to avoid conflict with the "shared" IRQ, which is often >possible >when running DOS, but not likely to be successful with any other intelligent >OS. The tiny sheet doesn't mention any IRQ's, and IO addresses are specified with only 3 hex-digits (so, there is no `x' nor `0'). I'm a newcomer to hardware issues, but I thought, one device in IRQ4 and 0x03F8 shouldn't conflict with another on IRQ4 and 0x?2F8. I'll try it right now, but anyway, it would be a pitty to loose the second (forth) serial port. Isn't there a way to avoid this? TIA -- Ciccio C. Simon [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- TO UNSUBSCRIBE FROM THIS MAILING LIST: e-mail the word "unsubscribe" to [EMAIL PROTECTED] . Trouble? e-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
