[SunRescue] HSSI card!

[James Lockwood]

On Sun, 16 Apr 2000, Jonathan Katz wrote:

> What exactly were these cards used for? When I get into work on Monday
> I think I'll print-up a copy of the manual (if I can find it) but until
> then I'd love to hear your thoughts.

If anyone has some real-world information on how these things perform
sending sync serial data with an external clock on something like a SS20,
I'd really like to know.  Buffer size information would be especially
useful.

Putting together a project for Burning Man this year (www.burningman.com)
involving a SS20 or similar driving a very interesting kind of LED
display.  Problem is, we need a time critical 2-4mbps sync serial data
rate and the onboard zs serial ports are barely capable of doing that
under ideal circumstances (tiny FIFOs).  I can precalculate the data
stream by quite a bit so huge buffers and low interrupt overhead would be
ideal.

Seems like I either need a HSSI card, an Ultra with se82532 serial ports
(which I wouldn't feel too great about lugging into the desert), or a
(hack ptooie) PC solution.  Naturally I'd rather go all Sun.  A PC laptop
would be great but I haven't seen many sync serial PCMCIA cards lately.

-James