From owner-freebsd-hackers Mon Jan 29 12:44:50 1996 Return-Path: owner-hackers Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.3/8.7.3) id MAA01530 for hackers-outgoing; Mon, 29 Jan 1996 12:44:50 -0800 (PST) Received: from phaeton.artisoft.com (phaeton.Artisoft.COM [198.17.250.211]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.3/8.7.3) with SMTP id MAA01500 for ; Mon, 29 Jan 1996 12:44:39 -0800 (PST) Received: (from terry@localhost) by phaeton.artisoft.com (8.6.11/8.6.9) id NAA04383; Mon, 29 Jan 1996 13:41:56 -0700 From: Terry Lambert Message-Id: <199601292041.NAA04383@phaeton.artisoft.com> Subject: Re: Multi-Port Async Cards To: dennis@etinc.com (dennis) Date: Mon, 29 Jan 1996 13:41:55 -0700 (MST) Cc: tim@sssun.spb.su, hackers@FreeBSD.org In-Reply-To: <199601271758.MAA07923@etinc.com> from "dennis" at Jan 27, 96 12:58:01 pm X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL24] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-hackers@FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk > >I think no. Linux have just the same problems with multiport cards as > >FreeBSD. From technical point of view I myself would prefer some > >Digiboard, but because of a very restrictive policy of this company > >on the design of inner parts of card design it's nearly impossible to > >implement a good driver without a NDA. > > How far away is the driver from being "good"? I have no problem with > NDAs? Neither do I, if someone else writes the driver. > Does this hold for all of their boards? or only certain high end ones? The difference between "high end" and "low end" operation of a "high end" board is nothing more than software. It is possible to download portions of the tty subsystem, such as flow control (in and out of band) and cannonical processing to a "high end" board. To do so, you need serious documentation on the board. Generally vendor supplied drivers (at least in the SCO world) have had a bunch of other "add-ons", like "transparent print" using a finite state automaton based on the attached terminal type to ensure printer data transfers only occur with the terminal in ground state in the terminals internal escape sequence processing automaton. This takes the place of atomic I/O processing of escape sequences and/or dictating allowable terminal types from a set of allowable types (ala DEC's VMS terminal I/O processing). Terry Lambert terry@lambert.org --- Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present or previous employers.