Super IO-Chips, was Re: [PARPORT] Probing for Super-IO Chips ...

From: Uwe Bonnes (bon@elektron.ikp.physik.tu-darmstadt.de)
Date: Mon Mar 19 2001 - 07:58:04 EST

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    >>>>> "im" == Tim Waugh <twaugh@redhat.com> writes:

        im> On Sun, Mar 18, 2001 at 06:41:13PM +0100, Uwe Bonnes wrote:

    >> However a cleaner solution would be i.m.h.o. to have a /proc/superio
    >> entry, that exports the relevant information (manufacturer, ioport
    >> for the different devices, mode of the devices) in a genuine way at
    >> least for reading. Device drivers would read information from the
    >> appropriate entries and handle things according to that information.

        im> I'd rather not add even more bloat to that file. If we had to keep
        im> this information around, it would go in /proc/sys/dev/parport/*/,
        im> but I don't think it's really needed.

    Well, these Super IO chips not only affect Parport. So this would be a new
    directory in the ../linux/drivers -tree, like drivers/pnp.

    I am trying to implement something like this:

    /proc/superio/superio: Lists available Superio Chips
    /proc/superio/0: Entry for first chip
    /proc/superio/1: Entry for second chip

    The content of a chip-entry would be lines with Keywords and values.
    A cat on that /proc/superio/0 file would give something like
    ppaddr 378
    ppirq 7
    ppdma 3
    ppactive 1
    pp...x
    ser0addr xxx
    ser0... xxx
    ser1...

    in random order ,as different chips have different features. Creating single
    proc entries for every feature would seem to me like a daunting task...

    Writing on some items would be allowed in some situations, like
    "echo "ppaddr 278" >/proc/superio/0
    would change the parallel port address, if the old adress isn't actual used.

    Exporting the Super IO Chip registers and decoding these in a user programm
    would be another possibility. However I feel bad about letting the user
    program write random registers...

    Bye 

    -- 
Uwe Bonnes                bon@elektron.ikp.physik.tu-darmstadt.de

    Institut fuer Kernphysik  Schlossgartenstrasse 9  64289 Darmstadt
--------- Tel. 06151 162516 -------- Fax. 06151 164321 ----------

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