> As soon as you have a port-specific driver where you could have
> a machine-independent one, you immediately lose all of the benefits of
> having it machine-independent.  Namely, the bug fixes and improvements
> to one version no longer apply to the others, and there are fewer
> people using & working on either so improvements come less quickly.

Of course.  I just can't see the benefits of a machine-independent, non-
functional driver either. ;-)

> This is a lose, and I see _no_ reason why the 'com' driver can't be
> made to work better in a nice machine-independent way.

Well, then it can remain machine-independent.  It just seems that when
a driver is rewritten to be machine-independent, it stops working.  I
once had a fully functional Hydra Ethernet driver for the Amiga, but
then someone wrote a new one, which suffers badly from overruns. :-(

  -jm