Skip site navigation (1)Skip section navigation (2)
Date:      Sun, 30 Nov 1997 20:03:35 GMT
From:      jak@cetlink.net (John Kelly)
To:        John-Mark Gurney <gurney_j@resnet.uoregon.edu>
Cc:        Bruce Evans <bde@zeta.org.au>, hackers@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: 650 UART, SIO driver, 8259 PIC
Message-ID:  <3484c18f.19943322@mail.cetlink.net>
In-Reply-To: <19971130030719.29570@hydrogen.nike.efn.org>
References:  <199711301019.VAA09201@godzilla.zeta.org.au> <19971130030719.29570@hydrogen.nike.efn.org>

next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
On Sun, 30 Nov 1997 03:07:19 -0800, John-Mark Gurney
<gurney_j@efn.org> wrote:

>ok, I see what you mean.. :)  that's good news, but it still doesn't
>force that the ports be in proper order...  we'll just have to document
>it this way if they want their AST/4 port board working.. just hope that
>people won't complain because they didn't have their setup correct in
>the first place..

In the section discussing IRQ control and status registers, the man
page only mentions four ports per interrupt sharing "group."  It also
says that "control and status registers for a group, if any, must be
mapped to the scratch register (register 7) of a port in the group.
Such a port is called a master port."  

With only eight bits in the scratch register, mapping both a control
and status register to it will limit your interrupt sharing group to a
maximum of four ports.

A software design based on that hardware configuration seems too
restrictive.  Eight port boards which share a single IRQ are common
now.  The board I have does not even use the idea of mapping.  You
simply jumper it to select an unused I/O address where the status port
will appear.  It renders obsolete the idea of a "master" port.

John





Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?3484c18f.19943322>