Subject: Re: Apollo keyboard, serial drivers (announce)
To: Jason Thorpe <thorpej@nas.nasa.gov>
From: mike smith <miff@spam.frisbee.net.au>
List: port-hp300
Date: 04/15/1997 23:38:19
Jason Thorpe wrote:
>  > The subject says it all.  In the file :
>  >
>  > ftp://spam.frisbee.net.au/pub/apollo/NetBSD/frodo.diff.gz
>                              ^^^
>                         Well, except for this :-)

Oops.  Just stuck a symlink-bandaid on it.
 
> Most cool!  I'll take a look at these RSN.  I have been thinking of
> some general changes I'd like to make to the HIL configuration code,
> so when these are committed, they may be in a slightly different form,
> and I may need you to test a kernel or two, since the LANCE on my 425
> is still toast :-/

Sure.  I'll try to pull up slightly more -current inbetween now and
then; although unfortunately mountd on my NFS server is playing up,
so I may be a few days away there 8(
 
> No offense intended, but I'm going to rename this to "dnkbd", since the
> label on the back of the machine is "Domain Keyboard"  :-)  The serial
> port driver will indeed be called "apci", however.

Sure.
 
> BTW, at some point, I'm going to be doing a bus.h implemetation for
> the hp300, in hopes of sharing the "com" driver with the i386 and
> alpha ports (although, it will get moved into sys/dev/ic, and some
> of those functions will get renamed :-) 

Ok; I'd be happy to tinker with that too.  Note that the apci ports
could probably be successfully operated by the 'com' driver as well,
as they respond well to being treated like 8250's.

I'd like to talk more about the whole bus.h thing, as I'd like to
try to fold the (E)ISA stuff into it too.  Any chance of some more
words happening?

> At that point, I'd like
> to think about doing something like the MI "zs" driver has done.  

I looked at that a little not long back, and TBH I liked it a lot more,
I just couldn't work the low-level console stuff out.  I should try
again now that I have a working scancode parser, as that's all the
driver should _really_ have to be.  More study of the sparc driver
would be fruitful, I suspect.

> I.e.
> we have the following:
> 
>         apci0 at frodo0 channel 0
>                 nsutty0 at apci0
>         apci1 at frodo0 channel 1
>                 dnkbd0 at apci1
>         apci2 at frodo0 channel 2
>                 nsutty1 at apci2
> 
> ..etc.  ("nsu" == "Nat Semi UART" :-)
> 
> Dunno how practical that is at this point... we'll have to see.

Hmm; does the MI 'com' driver there live under the guise of 'apci'
or 'nsutty'?

> Jason R. Thorpe                                       thorpej@nas.nasa.gov

--
Mike Smith  *BSD hack  Unix hardware collector
The question "why are the fundamental laws of nature mathematical"
invites the trivial response "because we define as fundamental those
laws which are mathematical".  Paul Davies, _The_Mind_of_God_