>  Unfortunantly, without seeing any kind of docs I'm reluctant to spring
> for one.  Can anyone recommend one of 'em?  They _look_ pretty nice, 16
> ports, 115.2k bps, expandable ram, the pcmcia slot.  Barring that, does
> anyone else have any other recommendations?  Or, perhaps, one that's in
> need of a good home?

Although I would never suggest this to typical Unix people, I'd say it's
pretty safe to not only say that VAX people are not typical, but are
sometimes excited about doing things in a non-typical way.

I have a colocated Amiga server for which I got a Commodore A2232 seven
port serial card. It is a pretty decent card: seven serial ports which run
at up to 115 kbps, controlled by a 2 MHz 6502. It can be overclocked to
4 MHz and run at up to 230 kbps.

Because of the 6502, there is almost unmeasurable CPU load on a 68060, and
the person responsible for porting the code for it to NetBSD (from
AmigaDOS) says that he ran seven modems off of a 25 MHz 68030 running
NetBSD, with barely several percent CPU.

So if you want a small machine and are interested in playing with m68k,
get an Amiga 2000 with an accelerator, an A3000 or an A4000 and an A2232.
I'm using mine to resell serial consoles to other people who are colocated
in the same rack, so mine is definitely paying for itself.

And according to the documentation from Commodore, up to five of them can
be used in a single machine (although the NetBSD code only configures up
to three right now), so if you can find the A2232s, you can get up to 21 (!)
serial ports on one NetBSD machine (the A3000 and A4000 have four Zorro
slots, and assuming one would be used for ethernet, three is a reasonable
limit).

Check out:
http://www.sixgirls.org/machines/reva/a2232_pretty.jpg
(16k)
http://www.sixgirls.org/machines/reva/a2232.jpg
(75k)

John Klos
-- 
Given the classical definition of insanity as an inability to distinguish
reality from fantasy, we live in a society that, through the media, is
trying to make all of us crazy.