My company sometimes uses multi-port serial cards under DOS (with some C
libraries to access them).  This is on a PC platform.  

We've been having trouble lately with what seems to be I/O port addresses,
by which I mean memory addresses in the 0x200-0x300 range being a problem.
The multiport cards use a range of 5-9 ports (settable as a block), and now
with new machines we've been having conflicts. 

The main conflicts happen on a new PCI motherboard Pentium we are trying to
set up.

Anybody got any idea, or maybe a map of how I/O ports are being used nowadays?
My AT era book shows lots of "UNDOCUMENTED" addresses, I'm guessing that
perhaps they are now documented and in use, no longer available.

2 responses total.

There's a book (which I unfortunately don't have here at the office),
which I think is called "the PC undocumented".  It *may* help you in
determining what is happening.  The "setup" software ought to be able to
tell you some stuff as well.  It would probably make sense to go through
everything it allows you to change, and look very carefully at port
assignments.

You might also try talking to the motherboard vendor.  There aren't
nearly as many real vendors as there used to be (indeed, there's
something like a 50% chance your board was made by intel), so it's
actually much more likely somebody else has run into the same problem.
The people who make your multi-port card would also be good to talk to,
for the same reason.

Well, it might also be the driver software...  We have a couple different
books along those lines, and they are all ata least two years old.  There are
a lot of "unused" addresses that I suspect are now being used.  Oh well.
We got enough ports working to get the job done.

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