Re: IOC with LOTS of serial ports

[David Kline <dkline@aps.anl.gov>]

Andrew Johnson wrote:

Hi Bob,

On Monday 08 March 2010 08:28:42 Dalesio, Leo wrote:
  

Does anyone have a cheap IOC that can handle 16? 32? 64? - serial ports?
Moxa has a 16 port version with 4 Ethernet ports for $1300. I'm looking to
beat this. Thanks,
    

Does the IOC actually need to be local to the serial ports?  You might find it 
cheaper and more flexible to use regular multi-port terminal servers and run 
the IOC(s) in a central location.  The Asyn port model makes the difference 
between local and remote ports just a few lines in the IOC start-up script, 
although I realize that there may be other considerations that prevent you 
from using this approach.
  

fwiw:
this is exactly what i'm doing and have been very happy with the results. the iocs run linux
(ebrick) or rtems (ucdimm) and communicate with the device server (nport 5610-16). it
runs ~$800 (usd) ...

- Andrew
  

-- 

+--------------------------------------------------+
David M. Kline                    dkline@aps.anl.gov
Argonne National Laboratory
Argonne IL, 60439                       630.252.8639

Advanced Photon Source, X-ray Science Division
Optics and Detectors Group
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                  Detectors-R-Us
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