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Help finding serial card dos drivers/settings.

P

Phil

Member
Joined
Mar 5, 2010
Messages
15
Location
Manchester, UK
I just got a Compaq Portable III which has a 8 bit serial card with 25 pin male d-sub connector. The markings on the card are: Copyright Microversal, SYNKARD, CJC-1187-01, REV 1.

Anybody know where to get DOS drivers and jumper settings from. I've searched the posts in this forum and googled till I can google no more but can find no info.

...
Phil
 
lxPhilxl


First time uploading a pic so hopefully the above worked. No biggy if it doesn't as I think I'm answering my own question below.

It doesn't have a 8250. The markings on the chip at top left are:
Z8530H-6PC
006D9XE
(C) 1986 AMD

So am I right in thinking that this is a 8530 serial chip and any generic 8530 DOS driver should do? There's also a total of 19 jumpers on the card . . . nope, missed one - make that 20 jumpers, obviously for IRQ and such. I don't have any use for the card at the moment but would like to store it along with the driver.
 
The Z8530 SCC is a pretty exotic animal. My guess is that your card is made to be paired with a data-link application and not a general-purpose async. RS-232C device.

Most likely, it was part of an X.25 bisync, HDLC/SDLC setup. A little Googling shows that there's a Linux driver for it, search on "Z8530 HDLC".

There do appear to be DOS drivers for it if you have a use for it.
 
Hmmm, nearly made a peanut of myself on this thread.
I had the post open earlier to answer, and only got to it now, like 2 hours later.

I was going to say if it is a standard rs232 card, it should not need any drivers for DOS - oops! :blush:
 
Chuck(G) said:
The Z8530 SCC is a pretty exotic animal. My guess is that your card is made to be paired with a data-link application and not a general-purpose async. RS-232C device.

Most likely, it was part of an X.25 bisync, HDLC/SDLC setup. A little Googling shows that there's a Linux driver for it, search on "Z8530 HDLC".

There do appear to be DOS drivers for it if you have a use for it.
Click to expand...

Excellent info there Chuck, many thanks. Time for me to go doing some research on this unassuming little card and the HDLC/SDLC setup. That's one of the reasons I love this hobby; there's always something that comes along out of the blue and opens up yet another avenue of research, there's always something new to learn.

...
Phil
 
Minerva10210 said:
Hmmm, nearly made a peanut of myself on this thread.
I had the post open earlier to answer, and only got to it now, like 2 hours later.

I was going to say if it is a standard rs232 card, it should not need any drivers for DOS - oops! :blush:
Click to expand...

No such thing as "making a peanut" out of yourself Minerva. If we all knew all the answers the internet would be redundant and a lot of people at google wouldn't be best pleased.

...
Phil
 
Phil said:
Excellent info there Chuck, many thanks. Time for me to go doing some research on this unassuming little card and the HDLC/SDLC setup. That's one of the reasons I love this hobby; there's always something that comes along out of the blue and opens up yet another avenue of research, there's always something new to learn.
Click to expand...

The Z8530 touches on another tidbit. It's a Z8000 peripheral, yet was probably least-deployed for that CPU. Like the Signetics 2651, the peripheral was better than the CPU. The designer of the Zilog Z80 SIO/DART chips also designed the Intel 8274 (just compare the datasheets) and I suspect, the Z8530. I don't recall if Intel ever followed up with a product of their own.

Back in the days of leased data lines, synchronous communications ruled. If you wanted a 9600 bps link to somewhere, you called Ma Bell and she'd set up a connection at both ends with a 209 modem with a nice DB25 connector for you to hook your equipment to. A hookup between San Francisco and Chicago would run several thousand dollars a month, when a dollar was still a dollar. The telco would take care of the modems (leased to you) and the line quality issues. But it was synchronous and often, half-duplex, so it had to be block-oriented with a well-defined protocol.

I lost more than a bit of hair setting such connections up until well into the 1980s. Fortunately, synchronous protocols have been largely forgotten. I couldn't even find a photo of a Bell 209 modem on the web.

My hair grew back. :)
 
Chuck(G) said:
. . . Back in the days of leased data lines, synchronous communications ruled. If you wanted a 9600 bps link to somewhere, you called Ma Bell and she'd set up a connection at both ends with a 209 modem with a nice DB25 connector for you to hook your equipment to. A hookup between San Francisco and Chicago would run several thousand dollars a month, when a dollar was still a dollar. The telco would take care of the modems (leased to you) and the line quality issues. But it was synchronous and often, half-duplex, so it had to be block-oriented with a well-defined protocol.

I lost more than a bit of hair setting such connections up until well into the 1980s. Fortunately, synchronous protocols have been largely forgotten. I couldn't even find a photo of a Bell 209 modem on the web.

My hair grew back. :)
Click to expand...

I've got a leased line modem, but I guess they're not interesting since this thread didn't go anywhere. :) It looks really cool though and has built in line diagnostics.
 
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