From owner-freebsd-hackers Mon Feb 13 21:11:47 1995 Return-Path: hackers-owner Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.cdrom.com (8.6.9/8.6.6) id VAA19143 for hackers-outgoing; Mon, 13 Feb 1995 21:11:47 -0800 Received: from ref.tfs.com (ref.tfs.com [140.145.254.251]) by freefall.cdrom.com (8.6.9/8.6.6) with ESMTP id VAA18846; Mon, 13 Feb 1995 21:07:07 -0800 Received: (from phk@localhost) by ref.tfs.com (8.6.8/8.6.6) id VAA16319; Mon, 13 Feb 1995 21:07:04 -0800 From: Poul-Henning Kamp Message-Id: <199502140507.VAA16319@ref.tfs.com> Subject: APM & PCMCIA To: hardware@FreeBSD.org Date: Mon, 13 Feb 1995 21:07:04 -0800 (PST) Content-Type: text Content-Length: 1486 Sender: hackers-owner@FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk I'd like to post this note to explain what is going on in the PCMCIA and APM (Automatic Power Management) area. At present we have part of HOSOKAWA Tatsumis APM code in the kernel, and we have one PCMCIA driver (if_ze). We do not have the rest of HOSOKAWAs APM/PCMCIA stuff, because it lacks the needed generality. It deals with PCMCIA cards present at boot, and makes no attempt to do hot-swapping. The APM stuff per se is as good as can be, given the APM spec. The problems are simply a question of architecture. First of, APM-bios isn't the only kind of power management, and several PM's must be able to co-exist. Second, all devices can potentially be controlled by a PM. Third, we want PCMCIA to be PM aware and hot-swappable. It is clear from the above that we need the device-drivers to be able to tell something about their states in relation to the PM, we may be able to use the "lsdev" stuff here. It also becomes clear that the present PCMCIA stuff stinks. Andrew McRae has made a pretty good first shot at a pcmcia functionality, and we are working to make it better. This is likely to turn into the FreeBSD pcmcia solution, as fast as we can do it. The place where the battle will be fought is in hardware@freebsd.org So if you are interested, send a subscribe request to majordomo@freebsd.org. Stay tuned... -- Poul-Henning Kamp TRW Financial Systems, Inc. I am Pentium Of Borg. Division is Futile. You WILL be approximated.