Recommendations for a serial port card you can actually BUY?

[Greg Black]

On 2006-10-05, Brooks Davis wrote:
> On Thu, Oct 05, 2006 at 07:09:56PM -0500, Karl Denninger wrote:
> > On Thu, Oct 05, 2006 at 04:04:47PM -0500, Brooks Davis wrote:
> > > On Thu, Oct 05, 2006 at 03:21:44PM -0500, Karl Denninger wrote:
> > > > 
> > > > FreeBSD's USB support has always been somewhat deficient.  For example,
> > > > apcupsd can't talk to their UPSs over the USB bus, even though the software
> > > > itself knows how, because FreeBSD doesn't know what a UPS is and throws up
> > > > its hands when you plug it in.
> > > 
> > > This is false for at least the APC SmartUPS the machine I'm sending this
> > > from is connected to.  I wouldn't be suprised if it was true once, but
> > > it isn't today.
> > > 
> > > ugen0: American Power Conversion Smart-UPS 750 FW:651.12.D USB FW:4.2, rev 1.10/0.06, addr 2
> > 
> > Does apcupsd connect to it?  I tried this back on 5.x and it failed
> > miserably.  It identified the unit, but wouldn't talk to it.
> 
> Yes.  I get notifications of power failures and can query status.

I don't know what you guys are doing right, but it doesn't work
right for me on

    $ uname -srm
    FreeBSD 6.1-RELEASE amd64

I do get some results: this is the console when it's connected:

    ugen1: American Power Conversion Smart-UPS 750 FW:651.12.I USB FW:7.3, rev 1.10/0.06, addr 6

I find that apcaccess gives much less info from the USB port
than it does from the RS232 port (on the same hardware) and
apctest (which I want to use to set eprom values) doesn't work
at all.  This is very irritating, as I'd like to use my only
serial port for a remote console.

For now, I've gone back to using the serial port.  But I'd love
the USB to work fully.

Greg