Trying to add serial card, does not get recognized...
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Have you tried a USB serial port?
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@jknott, I need a real serial port with a DB-9
, oops, DE-9 to get 1PPS working for NTP so USB is not good enough, it needs to be a real RS232 serial port...I wish I knew if the problem I currently have with 1PPS is with the NTP device or the motherboard serial port (or its cabling but I have checked and rechecked and it is supposed to have the right pinout) I have... I should hopefully receive a tester and serial to TTL adapters in a few weeks hopefully so I should eventually know where the problem actually comes from...
I wish that Startech card worked though as it can provide power on the serial port which opens up new possibilities (some GPS devices can be powered that way).
Have a nice day,
Nick
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@knight said in Trying to add serial card, does not get recognized...:
know of any good ISA to PCIe adapters?
It won't be easy, the ones I've known all have status "discontinued"
This MOXA used to work, you can still find it on eBay, Moxa Industio CP-114.
Perhaps this newer type (PCIe) could be made to work, although the specification does not mention FreeBSD compatibility (only UNIX such).
https://www.moxa.com/en/products/industrial-edge-connectivity/multiport-serial-boards/pcie-upci-pci-serial-cards/cp-102e-102el-series#specifications
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Hi!
@daddygo said in Trying to add serial card, does not get recognized...:
It won't be easy, the ones I've known all have status "discontinued"
This MOXA used to work, you can still find it on eBay, Moxa Industio CP-114.I was joking about ISA to PCIe because I possibly still have one of those card still lying around with either real 8250 or 16550AF uart chips...
(My first PC compatible computer was a XT compatible with a 8088 processor...)
I found and bought a PCIe CP-114 supposedly new with all the cables on eBay, let's hope this works...
The cable that comes with it seems to have DB-9/DE-9 on it and should support RS232, let's hope so..
I contacted the guy who had tried to add support for my StarTech card 3 years ago... As expected support for it was never committed and he told me he no longer has that card anyway.
I found an older thread where someone was trying to do something similar and seemed to have gotten better results, it is possible that there was an easier way to get it working than what the he tried... Support for these multi-port card involves multiple drivers (uart, puc and ppc), that other person got better results by modifying the puc driver.
I might try to setup another computer to try to get the card to work with FreeBSD. If I used FreeBSD 12.2 as a basis will I simply be able to copy the driver to my pfSense, I wonder...
Thank you and have a nice day!
Nick
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@knight said in Trying to add serial card, does not get recognized...:
I was joking about ISA to PCIe because I possibly still have one of those card still lying around with either real 8250 or 16550AF uart chips...
My first experience with the 8250 was with a board I designed & built for my IMSAI 8080 computer. I designed it for 8 UARTs, but only had 4 on it. In the process of testing it, I found a bug in the 8250, which I reported to Western Digital. They were unaware of that bug until then.
The Qotom mini PC I bought recently has a serial port built in.
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@knight said in Trying to add serial card, does not get recognized...:
XT compatible with a 8088 processor
We cannot be far apart in age....
I have used this also, there was a "turbo" button at the front, from 4 MHz to 8 if I remember correctly.... (with, green or yellow pixel monochrome VGA cathode ray tube monitors)
Yes the standard for industrial data loggers has remained ISA for a long time, I have Advantech cards and MOBOs with ISA BUS interface on the shelf.
By the way, I think I read somewhere that you want an NTP server with GPS sync?
Do I remember correctly?Why not use an external unit (we do) rPI4 + Waveshare GPS module + POE HAT + Raspbian (only CLI)
(this unit hangs (1 Gig) directly on the core switch to minimize latency)We time audio signal streams with this solution without any problems PTP IEEE 1588-2002 and1588-2008 for Audio over IP
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Hi!
@jknott said in Trying to add serial card, does not get recognized...:
My first experience with the 8250 was with a board I designed & built for my IMSAI 8080 computer. I designed it for 8 UARTs, but only had 4 on it. In the process of testing it, I found a bug in the 8250, which I reported to Western Digital. They were unaware of that bug until then.
I was a bit too young back then to do something like that and even to this day I would not be able to do this (though I wish I could).
You had me a bit puzzled with Western Digital as I did not remember they were doing clones of sort of the original National Semiconductor chip.
The first computer I played with back then was either a SYM-1 or a KIM-1 that were lent to my father (I played with both, not sure which was the first). My father later bought a Sinclair ZX81 (Z80 processor) and I later bought a Apple ¸][+ clone (6502 processor like the SYM-1 and KIM-1 on which I installed a Softcard (Z80 processor) to run CP/M in addition to to Apple DOS and ProDOS. I then bought a XT compatible followed by a 286, a 386, 486DX, etc...
@jknott said in Trying to add serial card, does not get recognized...:
The Qotom mini PC I bought recently has a serial port built in.
My pfSense box has one too and is a very recent motherboard (the previous one busted) but I am suspecting it might not work properly so I figured I should try with another...
I had not realized how hard it is to find hardware supported by FreeBSD, it is much harder than for Linux.
Thank you and have a nice day!
Nick
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@knight said in Trying to add serial card, does not get recognized...:
You had me a bit puzzled with Western Digital as I did not remember they were doing clones of sort of the original National Semiconductor chip.
Back in those days, I was a computer tech working on the big systems, not PCs. For example I used to work on the Air Canada reservation system. I did board level repairs and even got into the microcode on Data General Eclipse computers. I also took Electrical Engineering in college. So, designing and building something like that wasn't much of a challenge. Back then I even hand wired a couple of Ethernet controllers for Eclipse computers, but that was designed by an engineer at work.
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Hi!
@daddygo said in Trying to add serial card, does not get recognized...:
We cannot be far apart in age....
Early 50s here...
I have used this also, there was a "turbo" button at the front, from 4 MHz to 8 if I remember correctly.... (with, green or yellow pixel monochrome VGA cathode ray tube monitors)
Same thing here, the monitor on my XT compatible was amber...
Pretty sure I had CGA with a composite monitor at first though...
I had a green monitor on the Apple ][+ clone I had before it though...
By the way, I think I read somewhere that you want an NTP server with GPS sync?
Do I remember correctly?Yes...
Why not use an external unit (we do) rPI4 + Waveshare GPS module + POE HAT + Raspbian (only CLI)
I actually have a device that contains a u-blox LEA-5T in it that connects to the RS232 port and this device is supposed to provide 1PPS on CTS. I believe I set the system tunable correctly to make tell it to get it there but it did not work..
I did buy a KEYESTUDIO HAT with uses, apparently, a real u-blox NEO-6M which I can use with either a Raspberry PI or connected to the PC either by USB (no 1PPS though) or serial but unfortunately at TTL levels and I do not currently have an adapter for this... So if the getting things working on the pfSense box does not work I will always have that fallback.. I hope I will get it working though...
(this unit hangs (1 Gig) directly on the core switch to minimize latency)
We time audio signal streams with this solution without any problems PTP IEEE 1588-2002 and1588-2008 for Audio over IPYikes so pretty precise...
I will definitely consider this solution if getting it working on the pfSense box does not work...
I see that Stephen asked me a question on that NTP thread and he might be on to something, it might be possible that somehow the configuration to tell my pfSense to search for the signal on CTS might not be working... I wish I had received the device which shows the activity on each pin, I would have a better idea of where the problem is, the NTP device or the serial port or its configuration...
Thank you and have a nice day!
Nick
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Hi!
@jknott said in Trying to add serial card, does not get recognized...:
From Wikipedia
Due to the high demand, other manufacturers soon began offering compatible chips. Western Digital offered WD8250 chip under Async Communications Interface Adapter (ACIA) and Async Communications Element (ACE) names.Yep, I googled that Wikipedia page after you mentioned it initially...
Back in those days, I was a computer tech working on the big systems, not PCs.
Mainframes or minis, most likely mainframe back then...
At my current job I was in the only team which was not mainframe (I am a computer programmer). I did not play much with the mainframe except to work on some of the ways we were transferring data between the mainframe and PCs. Essentially we were taking control of terminal emulation programs through EHLLAPI to simulate someone typing on the mainframe to transfer information between the two...
I did play a bit more with As/400 (minis) at my previous job.
For example I used to work on the Air Canada reservation system. I did board level repairs and even got into the microcode on Data General Eclipse computers. I also took Electrical Engineering in college. So, designing and building something like that wasn't much of a challenge. Back then I even hand wired a couple of Ethernet controllers for Eclipse computers, but that was designed by an engineer at work.
Honestly I wish I could do that... I do have some notions of electronics but definitely not enough to do that...
I am also very bad at soldering... My main specialty is cold solder joints... I do want to learn it so I ordered a few kits to practice but I wish someone could tell me what I will be doing wrong so that I can correct myself..
Thank you and have a nice day!
Nick
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@knight said in Trying to add serial card, does not get recognized...:
Mainframes or minis, most likely mainframe back then..
Both. The Collins computers used in Air Canada were a MIL spec version of an IBM computer and was used as the communications front end for the UNIVAC system that was the main part of the reservation system. The rest were minis and super minis.
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@knight said in Trying to add serial card, does not get recognized...:
Early 50s here...
Late 40s here :)
if it helps I'll tell you I use these (for 1PPS): ublox NEO-M8T (with some modifications)
https://www.waveshare.com/product/neo-m8t-gnss-timing-hat.htmBTW:
it was my first "love" (Zilog Z80 3,1 MHz), then a Sinclair ZX spectrum, sorry for the hungarian language (wiki page), google helps, it was a own hungarian development VIDEOTON TV Computer -
Year - 1986https://hu.wikipedia.org/wiki/Videoton_TVC
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Hi!
@jknott said in Trying to add serial card, does not get recognized...:
Both. The Collins computers used in Air Canada were a MIL spec version of an IBM computer and was used as the communications front end for the UNIVAC system that was the main part of the reservation system. The rest were minis and super minis.
Yikes... I obviously never played with those but heard about them but I haven't heard about those in decades...
Have a nice day!
Nick
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Hi Guy!
(in reference to your latest avatar...
)@daddygo said in Trying to add serial card, does not get recognized...:
Late 40s here :)
It makes sense that we played with similar hardware then...
if it helps I'll tell you I use these (for 1PPS): ublox NEO-M8T (with some modifications)
https://www.waveshare.com/product/neo-m8t-gnss-timing-hat.htmThank you!
With @stephenw10 help in another thread we were able to get my LEA-5T mostly working...
It turns out that if you want to set on a per-port basis what signal (DCD or CTS) to use for 1PPS you can do it with a system tunable but if you want to make it the default for all ports you have to do it in loader.conf/loader.conf.local...
I was using the setting that should be put in loader.conf/loader.conf.local as a system tunable (in the screen of the same name in pfSense)...
I still have a recurrent error message
kernel reports TIME_ERROR: 0x2307: PPS Time Sync wanted but PPS Jitter exceededwhich I have no idea what it means but things are mostly working now...
BTW:
it was my first "love" (Zilog Z80 3,1 MHz), then a Sinclair ZX spectrum, sorry for the hungarian language (wiki page), google helps, it was a own hungarian development VIDEOTON TV Computer -
Year - 1986
https://hu.wikipedia.org/wiki/Videoton_TVCVery nice!
I had the Z80 in the Sinclair ZX81 and as a second processor in my Apple ][+ clone to run CP/M. I was also given a Microsoft computer which has one I think... I think I still have it somewhere... It had an S100 bus and ran CP/M I think...
Now you will say that Microsoft never made computers but this was another Microsoft company here... Apparently the guy who had incorporated it here made quite a lot of money when he sold back the rights to it to the Microsoft of Windows fame...
I think the Colecovision my brother and I had as kids also had one...
I really need to check if the Sinclair ZX81 still works one day... I know the Apple ][+ clone does not because the power supply failed (for a second time). I know there are replacement power supplies but the power supply was apparently one of the things they did not copy exactly so it would be kinda hard to get this working...
Thank you for your help and have a nice day!
Nick
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The ZX81 is virtually indestructible! I bet it still works.
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@knight said in Trying to add serial card, does not get recognized...:
(in reference to your latest avatar... )
Yah, thought I'd update it a bit...
how shitty the internet is here (Hungary) I forgot this is DOCSIS (50/300)... - instead of GPON
I already miss my chair and the rush... / RTOS
