*BSD News Article 51666


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From: "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@FreeBSD.org>
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Subject: Re: Is there a driver that can support ZyXel 2864I <--> Parallel Port?
Date: 18 Sep 1995 03:48:39 GMT
Organization: Walnut Creek CDROM
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The God of This World <root> wrote:
>The ZyXel 2864I ISDN modem provides a parallel port to interface with the PC.
>Running BONDed B channels with compression can run up to 480000 through the
>parallel port with less drain on system resources than serial. I'm wondering

That's actually not quite true.  The parallel port represents a *significant*
drain on the system as you have to service it by polling for each and every
character - your modern parallel port on a PC is actually a pretty stupid
beast, it seems.  When I first saw the ads for the 2864I I thought the exact
same thing you did, but a couple of parallel I/O experts set me straight.

All in all, I think a smart serial port would be a far better solution even
though you're only going to get 115.2K out of it.  Are these modems actually
for sale now anyway?  I've ordered myself an ISDN line but was just going to go
out and get a pair of Bitsurfer modems since I don't have $1400 lying around
for a pair of ZyXels and wasn't under the impression that they were currently
for sale anyway. The ZyXel page lists them as being "in BETA test".
-- 
						Jordan