Frank van der Linden wrote:

>When I merged  the i386mp code, I made the level of serial interrupts
>match the highest level (splserial == splhigh), not be above it.
>Having it be above everything violated some assumptions on the order
>of IPLs. It was originally done to keep up with high speeds on
>8250s or 16450s on slow 386 boxes.
>
>So this will have slowed it down a bit. But, having said that,
>a K6-200 with a 16550 should really be able to keep up with
>9600bps easily, even with the lower interrupt level. So perhaps
>something else is going on.
>
>I made the change when the i386mp branch was merged, on october
>1st. If you are seeing it with 1.6D, that would mean this
>change is *not* the cause, since 1.6D predates the i386mp
>merge by quite a bit.
>
>Anyway, since I will be bringing in a rewrite of some parts of
>the i386 intr code, I'll have to look at it after then.
>Maybe you can narrow down when it started to happen a bit.
>
>- Frank
>
>  
>
I've started my search. I'm pulling syssrc from cvs going back a month 
at a time. I'll let you know when the problem started. Hopefully I'll be 
able to run single use from the kernels so I won't have to keep getting 
an older userland - I haven't deleted any old libraries for ages so I 
should be OK.

Alex.