Re: need more serial ports

At Sat, 30 Dec 2006 21:00:45 +0000 (UTC) "Amadeus W.M." <amadeus84@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:


On Sat, 30 Dec 2006 21:18:08 +0100, Robert Heller wrote:

At Sat, 30 Dec 2006 17:48:56 +0000 (UTC) "Amadeus W.M." <amadeus84@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:


I have several devices that communicate with a pc via serial ports. I've
been using them on and off, one at the time, because my pc only has one
serial port. Now I want to use them all together. I searched and I found a
serial multiport card here:

http://www.stayonline.com/detail.aspx?ID=1131&gclid=CLGf2e_buokCFRBoNAodNR79qw

I didn't even know something like this existed. Anyway, I'm wondering if
something like this would work under linux.

Yes. I have one in my machine:

00:08.0 Serial controller: Lava Computer mfg Inc Quattro-PCI A
00:08.1 Serial controller: Lava Computer mfg Inc Quattro-PCI B

Work out-of-the-box with a 2.6 kernel, need a little help with
setserial with a 2.4 kernel.


Does anybody know of a different solution?

Thanks!



Excellent news! That's what I was hoping for, in asking here.
No drivers from the manufacturer, no kernel re-compilation I take it?

Correct.

I guess what I really wanted to ask was whether such a card needs a driver,
or if the linux serial driver will do. Thanks!

The ports on the Lava cards are standard vanila 16650 chips (or look
like standard vanila 16650 chips) -- no funky propriatory games and
fun. Just at addresses and IRQs that are off the beaten path (because
they are in PCI slots and get addresses and IRQs assigned by the BIOS).
The 2.4 serial port driver simply lacks the newer Lava Computer
'Quattro' PCI device ids in its probe tables -- setserial with explicit
addresses and IRQs deal with things during boot time -- you create an
rc.serial file and put the right magic in it (I think I might have some
script code somewhere that extracts the addresses/IRQs from lspci's
output). The 2.6 incarnation of the serial port driver has an updated
probe table and includes the newer cards, so the driver finds the ports
and configures them on its own.



--
Robert Heller -- 978-544-6933
Deepwoods Software -- Linux Installation and Administration
http://www.deepsoft.com/ -- Web Hosting, with CGI and Database
heller@xxxxxxxxxxxx -- Contract Programming: C/C++, Tcl/Tk

.

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