Comtrol RocketPort 550 uPCI, 16-port

[Nick Thompson]

>>  Hi. First off, to get it out of the way, I work for Comtrol. This is a
>> Comtrol GMBH (used to be Comtrol UK, now Comtrol GMBH [Switzerland])
>> product. The two are separate companies now. Anyhow, if you have had
>> this card for less than 30 days, I would hi,ghly recommend returning it
>> to the distributor for a RocketPort uPCI 16 port card,  as this  is a
>> Comtrol  U.S. product and we have a 6.2 driver for our entire RocketPort
>> line.

>Thanks for the info.  Is the external box with the RJ-45 serial ports 
>(part # 99420-6) compatible with the Comtrol US card you're about to
>send the link for, or would I need to send that back as well?

You can hang onto the interface, it's compatible with both the RocketPort 550 uPCI 16p as well as the RocketPort uPCI 16p. Here is the link to the page about the RocketPort uPCI 16p: 

http://www.comtrol.com/products/specifications/99355-1


>> other Unices guy in tech support at Comtrol U.S. and I would definitely
>> like to extend an invitation for anyone who would like a copy of the
>> driver to email me at my work address 

>Does this mean that the US card is not supported by the rp driver that
>comes with FreeBSD 6.2, or was that mostly aimed at folks who run an
>OS (version) that doesn't include a driver?
>
>Thanks again,
>Jeff

What that meant was that the driver that comes with FreeBSD 6.2 is an older version of the driver. (Much older, 8 years older I believe.) I've heard from folks who've had success with the driver that comes with 6.2 with certain cards, and heard from folks who've had success after hacking the code a bit with other cards. Either way, I am trying to get things to a point that our FreeBSD customers can be confident that their cards will be supported now, and into the future. When I arrived here, the last release was for FreeBSD 5.3:

ftp://ftp.comtrol.com/rport/drivers/u_pci/freebsd/5_x/1800255a.tgz

Since I personally run FreeBSD at home, and can see the value in keeping our drivers up to date with the current release, I wanted to get things up to date. I put in an engineering request for a 6.x driver, and we have it now. 

It's in the beta phase, and we have beta customers running it with no complaints at the moment. I will have to put the link up into this thread once it gets uploaded to the ftp server, which should be by the end of the week.

Regards,

Nick

Nick Thompson
Technical Support Specialist nick.thompson at comtrol.com
Comtrol Corporation ftp://ftp.comtrol.com
6655 Wedgwood Rd. Ste 120 http://www.comtrol.com
Maple Grove, MN. 55311 Sales: (800)GO-ROCKET