XRPi Documentation - Interfacing

SCC Cards

Name

SCC -- SCC Interfacing.

Description

SCC cards are peripheral cards which plug into the PC motherboard and contain one or more 8530 Serial Communication Controller (SCC) devices. Each chip contains two channels, which can be programmed to transmit and receive HDLC. With the addition of suitable AFSK modems each channel can function as a TNC.

Unlike the DOS version of XRouter, there is currently no support for SCC cards in XRPi. The reasons for this are three-fold:

1. Firstly, most SCC cards are ISA, and there can't be many people running modern versions of Windows on machines with ISA motherboards??

2. Secondly, unlike DOS, Windows does not allow applications such as XRPi to access hardware directly. Thus SCC support would have to be implemented as an external device driver. It is not considered worth the investment of time and effort writing drivers that no-one will use. That effort is better spent on other aspects of XRPi. However a driver could be written, if there is any demand for it?

3. Lastly, the AGW Packet Engine (AGWPE) already supports SCC cards, and XRPi can use AGWPE (see AGW Interface), so once again there seems little point writing a driver.