Navtel 9460 Protocol Analyzer info?

[der Mouse]

>>> (not gonna wire two 6402 UARTS to my SYM-1 and [...])
>> How about one Z8530?  :-)  [it's a DUART, for the Zilog-impaired]
> The 8530 is a useful part for dedicated purposes, but isn't it
> severely bandwidth cramped?

I don't think so, not per se.

> I am thinking that it's the serial chip in the Sparcstations, correct
> me if I'm wrong.

No, that's right as far as it goes - most SPARCstations, at least.

> A few years ago I was pondering making a 'dialup connecting system
> with NAT server' out of a SparcStation Classic (the little lunchbox
> type Sparc).

Well, _one_ of the lunchbox SPARCs.  (The others are the IPC, the IPX,
and the LX.)

> I discovered quickly that the serial ports on the Sparc are VERY
> speed constrained because of the 8530 chip.  It would have been
> impossible to connect my USB Courier V-everything modem to it at, say
> 57,600 baud, because the 8530 just plain won't go that fast.

While this is true of the 8530 *as used in the SPARCstations*, this is
largely because of the clock Sun chose to drive it with.  Use a faster
clock and your baud rate cap goes up correspondingly.  (Presumably
there is a limit on the clock rate, but I don't know what it is; I'm
fairly sure it's well above what Sun uses, at least.)

Now, depending on the associated electronics, there may be other
limits.  For example, the 8530 has discouragingly little buffering
on-chip; to run at high baud rates you will need to either (a) add
buffering in front of it, (b) handle a relatively high rate of
interrupts, or (c) do some rather delicate bare-metal tapdancing.

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