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From: Julian Elischer <julian@ref.tfs.com>
Message-Id: <199509122108.OAA00220@ref.tfs.com>
Subject: Re: Creating FreeBSD driver. How?
To: terry@lambert.org (Terry Lambert)
Date: Tue, 12 Sep 1995 14:08:55 -0700 (PDT)
Cc: shamrock@netcom.com, hackers@FreeBSD.ORG
In-Reply-To: <199509122035.NAA02186@phaeton.artisoft.com> from "Terry Lambert" at Sep 12, 95 01:35:20 pm
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> 
> > I got some National Semi's Hydra isoEthernet cards. Since I got more cards
> > than normal PCs, I have been thinking about sticking one into my FreeBSD
> > box. Of course I'd need a driver to get the iso part working. I got the iso
> > drivers for DOS that came with the card. The normal ethernet part of the
> > card can be standard NE2000. Of course if you use an NE2000 driver you are
> > missing out on the iso part. How do I go about creating a driver for
> > FreeBSD that will give full functionallity? Are there any faqs or other
> > tips? I searched the FreeBSD web site without avail.
> 
> Is there a Novell Server (not Client!) ODI driver for the thing?
> 
> The ODI driver stuff may be easy to hack, depending on the driver
> architecture.  Specifically, if it uses polling or a not-busy interrupt,
> then you are probably SOL and will need to write the driver from scratch.
> 
> ISO by itself is meaningless (means International Standards Organization)
> as far as telling us what the card capabilities are.  It's probably just
> a manufacturer name.
I believe that thios card may impliment nat-semi's 
ISOCHRONOUS ethernet.. (isoenet)
they use two unused states in the encoding of the data on the wire
to pass synchronous data (or something).. I don't pretend to understand
it exatly but did meet one of the engineers who worked on it
when I was on holidays in Greece :)

> 
> Since you say you've never done a driver before, you'll probably not have
> sufficient information to do the ODI hack, which means it probably won't
> get done.
> 
> 
> 					Terry Lambert
> 					terry@lambert.org
> ---
> Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present
> or previous employers.
>