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List:       freebsd-hackers
Subject:    Re: Inteface for external drivers. (ppa3)
From:       Michael Smith <msmith () atrad ! adelaide ! edu ! au>
Date:       1997-05-31 12:27:00
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J Wunsch stands accused of saying:
> 
> As has been discussed before, the design of the various subdrivers for
> the parallel port needs an overhaul.  ISTR that Michael Smith
> volunteered for this (but required to get a ZIP drive first).
> Incidentally, Mike is also confident with the UserConfig code. ;-)

You will be (may be?) happy to know that I have several reams
(literally) of parallel port chip datasheets lying around here, and I
am currently learning more than I ever wanted to know about parallel
ports.  (Does anyone have a soft copy of the ieee1284 spec, or even
one of the late drafts?  I can't get one short of buying the sod, and
that's kinda hard from here 8( )

Right now, I am struggling with the design of a suitable interface
that will (attempt to) hide the details of the hardware involved
whilst accepting that the modes of communication with parallel-port
peripherals generally varies with the configured mode of the port.

This is complicated with the fact that whilst most of the "multi-I/O"
chips are soft-configurable, their configurations can be locked, and
this locking is usually perfoemed by the BIOS, and can only be
unlocked by a hardware reset.

It's enough to make you sick.  Very sick.

(I have the Zip, thanks to Jordan.  The driver works "OK", but not well
enough that I want to commit it yet.  There are copyright problems too.)

-- 
]] Mike Smith, Software Engineer        msmith@gsoft.com.au             [[
]] Genesis Software                     genesis@gsoft.com.au            [[
]] High-speed data acquisition and      (GSM mobile)     0411-222-496   [[
]] realtime instrument control.         (ph)          +61-8-8267-3493   [[
]] Unix hardware collector.             "Where are your PEZ?" The Tick  [[

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