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From: cowan@marob.masa.com (John Cowan)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.internals
Subject: Re: Multiplexed Special Devices
Message-ID: <271203B2.5C8F@marob.masa.com>
Date: 9 Oct 90 17:06:58 GMT
References: <6633@ncrcae.Columbia.NCR.COM>
Organization: The Logical Language Group, Inc.
Lines: 18

In article <6633@ncrcae.Columbia.NCR.COM> porr@ncrcae.Columbia.NCR.COM (Greg Porr) writes:
>
>Does anyone know the origin of the "Multiplexed Character Special" (IFMPC)
>and "Multiplexed Block Special" (IFMPB) device types?  These are defined
>in the inode.h header file as it comes in all Releases of System V, but
>I've never seen it used in any kernel source.
>
>
>Greg Porr


Multiplexed devices were an unlovely hack in straight V7 that didn't make
it into either BSD or Sys V flavors of *ix.  They essentially tried to
handle the "many to one, multiple connections" problem.  They predate
named pipes, sockets, etc.
-- 
cowan@marob.masa.com			(aka ...!hombre!marob!cowan)
			e'osai ko sarji la lojban