PCI-X Multiport Serial cards.

[Bob Willcox]

On Mon, Oct 13, 2003 at 06:44:41AM -0700, Jamie Bowden wrote:
> On Sun, 12 Oct 2003, C. Stephen Gunn wrote:
> 
> > Jamie Bowden (ragnar at 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).

I worked on a project developing a PCI-X card a couple of years ago and
we ran these cards in 64-bit, 3.3v, 66MHz PCI slots for most all of our
testing (except when performance was being measured). Consequently, I
would argue that Stephen is correct in that a PCI card should fit into a
PCI-X slot so long as the PCI card is 3.3v compatible (keyway is in the
right place).

[snip]

-- 
Bob Willcox           If your happiness depends on what somebody else does,
bob at immure.com        I guess you do have a problem.
Austin, TX                      -- Richard Bach, "Illusions"