Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!clyde!att!pacbell!ames!ncar!gatech!hubcap!ncrcae!ncrlnk!uunet!mcvax!hp4nl!philmds!nlgvax!johan
From: johan@nlgvax.UUCP (Johan Stevenson)
Newsgroups: comp.os.minix
Subject: Re: Rs232 on Minix-ST
Message-ID: <189@nlgvax.UUCP>
Date: 10 Jan 89 21:56:42 GMT
References: <6422@louie.udel.EDU>
Reply-To: johan@nlgvax.UUCP (Johan Stevenson)
Organization: Philips Research Geldrop
Lines: 23

In article <6422@louie.udel.EDU> mills@ccu.umanitoba.ca (Gary Mills) writes:
>In the recently-posted rs232 addition to minix-st, a completely separate
>driver and kernel task is used for rs232.  I had hoped it could be combined
>with the tty driver.  Aren't we trying to keep Minix small?  Is there likely
>to be an "official" rs232 driver for minix-st, perhaps somewhat related to
>the PC version.

Almost a year ago a student worked at Philips on the RS232 driver for
MINIX-ST based on tty.c. Since this was for a prelease of MINIX-ST it
needs minor work for the current version, but it certainly doable.
It also needs work for incorporating some stty/gtty changes from
MINIX-PC 1.3 that must be incorporated into MINIX-ST 1.1.
The rs232 driver really worked. Even Phil Karn's TCP/IP package was
ported at that time using SLIP over rs232, and we succeeded hooking it
up to either a VAX or Sun.
One issue in favor of a separate driver might be speed. We have not
done any measurements at that time, but I think it worked for 2400
baud, 4800 baud often, but not for 9600.
It is worth the effort to reconsider, but I have no time now, and
I think some others are already working on it (yes?).
In case it might help I could send someone a snapshot.
--
Johan W. Stevenson	johan@pcg.philips.nl		Philips Research