PCI-X Multiport Serial cards.
Jamie Bowden
ragnar at sysabend.org
Mon Oct 13 06:44:44 PDT 2003
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).
> 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 at alaric.org.uk>
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