🚀 go-pugleaf

John Saunders wrote:
> I have a clone of a Cyclades 8 port card that doesn't seem to work. The
> card is an ISA card with 2 CD1400 RISC serial chips. 

All of us here at Cyclades drew staws and I pulled the short one-- so
I get to reply to this post.  So here goes:

-------------------  WARNING!!!  Offical BS to follow!  -------------------

Cyclades is aware of several clones of our Cyclom-Y series.  Many of the
companies that made clones went out of business, but there is probably one
or two left somewhere.  

We've tested these cards with our standard diagnostic software and have 
found that they are all, um, "lacking".  Most of them had some type of 
bug or another.  Some of these bugs are very serious.  One bug we've
found would keep the board from working in 50% of all Pentium based 
machines.

We have never found a card that is 100% compatible with our cards.  
If any card operates with our drivers it's by coincidence only, 
since we've never tested a clone card that worked with all of our
drivers (and we're not just saying that :).

So...  Cyclades doesn't guarantee that our drivers work with a Non-Cyclades
board.  We also don't offer any technical support for non-Cyclades boards.

Anyone who has a clone of a Cyclades card and is dis-satisfied 
with it can email sales@cyclades.com.  We like to keep track of these
cards and, if possible, help out those few people who get burned by
counterfeits.  We currently don't have an upgrade policy for these
unfortunate people, but we might be persuaded into it...  :)

---------------------- End of offical BS ------------------------------

For legal reasons I cannot say anything more.  It's a shame when the 
legal system forbids us in bad-mouthing someone who really deserves
it!


> The card uses
> memory mapping to 0xd400 (or others selectable with jumpers) and IRQ 10
> (other selectable with jumpers). The problem I get is that the card isn't
> detected with the Linux driver. This is with a 486 board running a Cx 5x86
> CPU. If I disabled the internal and external cache and enable write-through
> cache it gets detected but the IRQ isn't detected. I put the card in a
> Pentium machine, ASUS MB, and it isn't detected with any BIOS settings.

Off the record:  Two of the problems that we've seen with the clone cards
has been with their ability to work with some Pentium machines and with
their IRQ handling.  Both of these would make it not work in your system.

I reccomend that you try to get in touch with their technical support.  When
you get frustrated with their "support", email our sales department and see 
what they can do to help.


David Kessner
Sr. Hardware Engineer
Cyclades Corp
dkessner@cyclades.com

David Kessner (dkessner@cyclades.com) wrote:
: John Saunders wrote:
: > I have a clone of a Cyclades 8 port card that doesn't seem to work. The
: > card is an ISA card with 2 CD1400 RISC serial chips. 

: Off the record:  Two of the problems that we've seen with the clone cards
: has been with their ability to work with some Pentium machines and with
: their IRQ handling.  Both of these would make it not work in your system.

: I reccomend that you try to get in touch with their technical support.  When
: you get frustrated with their "support", email our sales department and see 
: what they can do to help.


I bought a used cyclades card, and it works well with Linux, however...

The SB soundcard ocassionally distorts, I changed it's DMA buffers, and it 
still squeels once in a while, when I jiggle on the Cyclades card, the 
problem goes away temporarily. 

Do these companies that make 'Clones' make their boards differently? The 
card looks exactly the same as the manual says it should, is there a way 
to know if I bought a clone in  a cyclades box? (I did buy the thing 
used, so it's possible) 

Clone or no clone, I like the card, it mostly works well. :-) 

Thanks.

Jamie