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- Subject: Re: Amiga SERIAL ports
- Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.hardware
- References: <2020.6559T704T1766@freeway.net> <wfblanDJss07.6xo@netcom.com>
- <30E2D96E.16E4@pop.gpnet.it> <1159.6573T670T2117@ping.be>
- <19960101.77BBC28.F38C@ragtime.vnet.net>
- X-Newsreader: TIN [AMIGA 1.3 950726BETA PL0]
- Path: tharkad.aball.de!news
- From: "Harald Fricke" <fricke@tharkad.aball.de>
- Date: Wed, 3 Jan 1996 14:54:47 MET
- Message-ID: <030196r1454@tharkad.aball.de>
-
- In article <19960101.77BBC28.F38C@ragtime.vnet.net>, John Kelly (jkay@ragtime.vnet.net) wrote:
- >
- > Bart.Uyttenhove@ping.be (Bart Uyttenhove) writes:
- >
- > > I can agree about that. Made a game using pal (720*576) in 256 colors and
- > > heavy serial activity at 19200 baud. Every now and then there were problems:
- > > some bytes of incoming serial data were missing. The solution was to reduce
- > > the baudrate to 4800 baud. An alternative is to by a card with an internal
- > > serial buffer on it.
- > > The game is running on a A4000/40....I was dissapointed.
- >
- > The Amiga has a ONE BYTE serial buffer. ONE BYTE.
- >
- > 16 bytes was too fucking expensive, I guess.
- >
- (...)
- Serial interface chips with FIFO were not too common in 1985. And, as someone
- else already pointed out, 300-1200 bps was common those days and everything
- above was luxury, at least in telecommunications.
-
- The Amiga serial port indeed does remarkably well for a design more than
- 10 years old. You get fairly reliable 38400 bps with the standard serial port
- and a GUI running, something the Wintel boxes still have to learn.
-
- Back to ***beep*** expensive: The serial port is part of the Paula chip that
- was so far ahead of it's time that CBM never came around to upgrade it :(.
- And yes, modifiying such a complex thing (and probably "porting" it to a
- different manufacturing process) would have been expensive.
-
- - Harald
-