Phil Knaack wrote:

> It occurs to me .. running 38400 on a non-FIFO serial port is quite a few
> interrupts per second to handle. 3840 per second, to be approximate.

Oops, that wasn't what I meant as "ordinary", I was meaning a 16550,
which is pretty much standard issue on any PC built recently (1-2 years?)
My AST card has 4 16550s on it. (replaced 4 16450s)

16550:
38400 / 10 = 3840 bytes/second
8 byte trigger? = 480 interrupts/second
4 byte trigger? = 960 interrupts/second

16450:
9600/10 = 960 bytes/second
no fifo = 960 interrupts/second

Now I may be a lamer, but it seems to me that the only difference between
servicing a 16450 @9600 vs a 16550 @38400 (4 byte trigger), is that the
ISR needs to empty the fifo.  Am I missing something?

> Is it reasonable for an otherwise lightly-loaded 486/66 to service this
> many interrupts per second?

3840, I don't know...  960, I would hope so. 


-Andrew