🚀 go-pugleaf

    I have been asked to look at the possibility of hooking up a 
    custom-built peripheral to an Indigo.  The peripheral box
    currently communicates with a PC via an SDLC serial connection
    running at 182 kBaud (so I'm told); the idea is to replace the PC 
    with an Indigo.

    SGI sells an SDLC card for its VME-based machines, but nothing
    for the Indigo, apparantly.  I've talked to SGI Express, who
    don't know of any 3rd party SDLC boards for the Indigo.  Does anybody
    else out there know of anything along these lines?  

    What about the Zilog Z85130 DUARTs used by the Indigo?  Don't these
    things have an SDLC mode they can run in?  Is this one of those
    things that might work, but is not "supported"?  Some of the #defines
    in sys/z8530.h seem to indicate SDLC functionality...

    The man page for serial(7) also seems to indicate that an external
    clock can be provided to the DUARTS.  Is this a way of getting these
    things to run at a rate faster than the officially supported maximum
    of 38.4 kBaud?  Is there any more in the documentation about this?

    If the DUARTs can't be made to handle anything greater than 38.4 kBaud,
    would it be feasible to consider building some "black box" to convert
    the incoming SDLC serial data to something which could be fed in
    through the parallel printer port?  Perhaps such a thing
    already exists?

    Any and all comments, suggestions, caveats, and/or dire warnings greatly
    appreciated!  Is this an impossible task altogether, or is there some
    hope?

    Thanks,
    Chris
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Chris Welman					Simon Fraser University
welman@sfu.ca					(604) 291-3610