Is there such a thing as a serial port router?
 

Hello everyone!

I just got the PiTux distribution and put it on a really old computer, I used it as a dumb terminal and it OWNED - it was that 80s experience I've been trying to find for the past few years.

Who thought a 50MHz 486 with less than 8 megs of RAM could get online at blazing speeds with no hassle at all?

Now I want all of my old computers doing this. But my host computer only has one serial port, is there something to serial connections as routers are to Ethernet connections?

Thanks in advance. (This is so exciting! Let me try MySpace...)

You can pick up 10megabit isa ethernet cards for real cheap. You might even find some 100megabit isa cards for cheap. The last time I was in the used computer shop they had a big box of old ISA Ethernet cards for $5 each (guaranteed to work, actually bad ones swapped for another one). You will be surprised how many tasks a 486 can still do.

You can look at an ISA serial card with, say, 4 ports. You just have to see what chip is used and if there is a current working driver in the kernel. Whack on 'mgetty' and set up pppd on a per-port basis, plus maybe dhcpd, and your other computers can connect as if they were just connecting to an ISP via dial-in - except that you're the ISP and you don't need modems.

Admittedly that hardware may be a wee bit difficult to come by, but some contemporary boards have that sort of stuff - for example, check out the "PPM-GX" from WinSystems (www.winsystems.com). The only problem: that board costs a bit and using it as a serial router is waaay overkill - you might consider it if you want to set that device as a server+router and your older machines could even connect as "thin clients". I can't imagine such a purpose built computer coming in under $400 - and that's assuming you can get a main board for under $200.

lazlow: This is a laptop, so no ISA connector. It does have PCMCIA, and I have an ethernet card that claims to be 16-bit, but I've tried it before (using Windoze) on other laptops to no avail...

pinniped: The host doesn't have ISA, but your comments lead me to find this:
http://sewelldirect.com/dualserialpci.asp
I will buy a couple with my next allowance.

Thanks you both! Erm, also, that 2-port PCI card, do you know if it will it work with Linux without any external drivers? Like, will the motherboard assimilate it as its own serial ports?

PCI is not PCMCIA (you can get a specialized PCMCIA-to-PCI adapter, but they cost about $1k).

There are PCMCIA serial adapters though (and I have seen some with 4 serial ports). BUT - you need to find out what type PCMCIA slot you have (1 or 2/3) and what type the serial adapters are. You also need to find out what chip is inside the adapters and if they have a Linux driver.

I expect cards to be expensive though since they are specialty items; for example:
http://www.quatech.com/catalog/rs232_pcmcia.php

I don't even know if those cards would run under Linux, but looking at the price, you can build a brand new 4-port router + server + proxy box for just a wee bit more money.