Navtel 9460 Protocol Analyzer info?

[Scott Stevens]

On Thu, 14 Apr 2005 14:52:14 -0700 (PDT)
"Eric Smith" <eric at brouhaha.com> wrote:

> Scott wrote:
> > The 8530 is a useful part for dedicated purposes, but isn't it
> > severely bandwidth cramped?
> 
> No, unless you're comparing to Ethernet.
> 
> > I am thinking that it's the serial chip in the
> > Sparcstations, correct me if I'm wrong.
> 
> I think you're right.
> 
> > 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).  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.
> 
> Sounds like a problem with Solaris.

It's probably a problem with Sun's hardware design.  I was trying to get
it up and running at high speed with NetBSD.  I remember reading that
there were some 'hacks' to get it running slightly faster than 57,600
baud but only at a few weird non-standard data rates.

> The chip is easily capable of over
> 1 Mbps.  There's a commonplace existence proof of the ability of the
> Z8530 to do over 230 Kbps -- that's what was used for LocalTalk
> (low-end physical layer of AppleTalk, originally simply called
> AppleTalk) on most Macintoshes from 1984 to the mid 1990s.
> 
> Eric
>