[Dxspider-support] Replace BPQ Switch

[Bill Shell]

Colin,

Thanks for the suggestion to migrate to serial ports.  That is also what I
prefer.  Unfortunately, the systems I am replacing all have DRSI cards, and
there is a significant investment in the DRSI cards.

I've been able to make all of the DRSI cards work in the nodes.  The only
problem I've spent any time at, that I finally admitted defeat, was when I
was attempting to use more that two cards on the same interrupt.  Unless
someone can tell me "the secret", I have resigned to only use two DRSI cards
per system. Hi Hi

I have found out that kiss mode is one of the options of the X1J TNCs, and
they can be put into that mode by the sysop entering a new configuration
string.  The serial port of the X1J TNC can be configured to used for
crosslink or kiss control.  That was the answer I was looking for, and I
found it in one of the instruction files that comes with the X1J download
package.

I decided to go ahead and set up an X1J TNC for testing, but didn't realize
it was such a chore.  I'll start on the new node some time this week.  I'll
use a kiss mode TNC for testing, and just hope it will work with the X1J
TNC.  If it doesn't, then I've got the problem that the TNC that needs to be
replaced is 150 miles away on a mountain top.  At least we aren't trying
this the weekend before a CQ WW Contest.

By the way, I've found the old ISA multi-port serial cards by Digi readily
available on the surplus market.  During installation, SuSE and RedHat
recognize the Digiport cards and setup the ttyS# ports correctly.  The cards
are large, but they give you up to 8 serial ports on a single interrupt.
The work good for applications of three kiss TNCs, I've not tried them for
any more traffic.  But they may be good for hanging a larger number of kiss
TNCs on a system.

Thanks again.

73, Bill

-----Original Message-----
From: Colin Harris [mailto:chedward at tiscali.co.uk]
Sent: Sunday, June 01, 2003 11:02 PM
To: n6ws at charter.net; The DXSpider Support list
Subject: Re: [Dxspider-support] Replace BPQ Switch


Just a suggestion Bill. Our Cluster group in S/W England
tried to find suitable info for using DRSI cards with Linux
but failed. Instead we obtained a couple of single port
serial cards to insert into the linux box. This gave us 4
serial ports though you could add dual port cards.  Our
experience was that the DRSI cards , being very old now ,
were intermittently unreliable.

I've not run X1J so can't answer that query though I thought
X1J remote nodes usually run from internal kiss eproms.

- Regards Colin ( GB7PDX )

----- Original Message -----
From: Bill Shell <n6ws at charter.net>
To: Dxspider-Support at Dxcluster. Org (E-mail)
<dxspider-support at dxcluster.org>
Sent: Monday, June 02, 2003 1:43 AM
Subject: [Dxspider-support] Replace BPQ Switch


o/dxspider-support