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Date:      Tue, 2 Feb 1999 00:11:50 -0500
From:      Dexter McNeil <dexter@panix.com>
To:        freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Serial port probe in 3.0 - bug? Feature? And other questions...
Message-ID:  <19990202001150.25091@panix.com>

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Hi,

	I've assembled a new test box to try out 3.0 on before the grand
upgrade... So far so good! In the course of getting this thing together
(you know, the rumage around in the box of bits to scrape together yet
another computer routine....) and making sure that the hardware was stable
(easier said than done this time around...), I've noticed a bit of odd
behavior in the serial port probe. I'd put this thing together without any
serial port boards in it. The start up probe message seems to show that
while it can't find a port with a matching interrupt for assignment, it
does seem to default to having found a phantom 8250 uart for sio0. If I
put a serial port board in (this one having two 16450 uarts and a printer
port), it finds sio0 and sio1 where they belong. With the right uart IDs.
Bug? Feature? :-)

	I spent a little time looking in sio.c and noticed that it seems to
default to identifying as an 8250 if it can't determine which other chip
it might be. Given the fact that 8250s are VERY obsolete, can't we just
pull this one? The 16450 was National Semiconductor's answer to the
slowness and generally crufty specs of their 8250 when the original PC/AT
came out. Also, is there any reason for all the variants on the serial
port cards being in one file? Shouldn't things like the Hayes ESP be in a
separate file/driver? It would make it easier to read/understand. Just a
thought.

	A final question (which probably belongs on -scsi) - I've got an older
DPT board (see dmesg.today, below) which while it appears in the list of
detectable devices in the dpt driver code, and shows up at a legal
interrupt address when using the EISA config software, seems to cause the
EISA/DPT probe to fail. I've tried looking in the source for an answer,
but I don't know enough about how the controller responds to queries to
follow the code through. The controller is assigned to irq 14 and
changing irq assignments doesn't seem to change the error message. The
controller was removed from a working Linux box that I had set up a couple
of years ago, and stuck in storage until now. It passes all the relevant
DPT related diagnostics. It's a PM2012B-90, which has a EISA ID of
DPTA401. A DPT PM2122 passes just fine and is found and is usable by the
kernel.

	Otherwise 3.0-stable seems to work very well. I had no problems with
the initial install from the 3.0 CDs, and the cvsup and upgrade of the
boot loader was straightforward after following -stable for a while. Seems
to run a bit faster than 2.2.8-stable, though that's not a fair comparison
between the two machines that I have here. The 2.2.8 box is the working box,
and has quite a bit more load on it. OTOH, a kernel sure seems to compile
quicker...

	Regards,
	Dexter McNeil
	dexter@panix.com

--- begin dmesg.today ---
Copyright (c) 1992-1999 FreeBSD Inc.
Copyright (c) 1982, 1986, 1989, 1991, 1993
	The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved.
FreeBSD 3.0-STABLE #7: Sat Jan 30 23:17:07 EST 1999
    dexter@wilma.localhost:/usr/src/sys/compile/LOCAL
Timecounter "i8254"  frequency 1193182 Hz
CPU: i486 DX2 (486-class CPU)
  Origin = "GenuineIntel"  Id = 0x435  Stepping=5
  Features=0x3<FPU,VME>
real memory  = 20971520 (20480K bytes)
avail memory = 18038784 (17616K bytes)
Preloaded elf kernel "kernel" at 0xf0298000.
eisa0: <FIC00 (System Board)>
Probing for devices on the EISA bus
dpt at slot 6: illegal irq setting 56
ep0: <3Com 3C579-TP EISA Network Adapter> at 0x3000-0x300f, 0x3c80-0x3c89 irq 10
ep0: on eisa0 slot 3
ep0: aui/utp[*UTP*] address 00:20:af:1d:3a:c1
bt0: <Buslogic 74xB SCSI host adapter> at 0x330-0x333, 0x5c00-0x5cff irq 11
bt0: on eisa0 slot 5
bt0: BT-742AH FW Rev. 3.22 Narrow SCSI Host Adapter, SCSI ID 7, 30 CCBs
eisa0:6 <DPTa401=0x1214a401> unknown device
Probing for devices on the ISA bus:
sc0 on isa
sc0: MDA/Hercules <16 virtual consoles, flags=0x0>
atkbdc0 at 0x60-0x6f on motherboard
atkbd0 irq 1 on isa
sio0: configured irq 4 not in bitmap of probed irqs 0
sio0 at 0x3f8-0x3ff irq 4 flags 0x10 on isa
sio0: type 8250
sio1: configured irq 3 not in bitmap of probed irqs 0
sio1 not found at 0x2f8
lpt0 at 0x3bc-0x3c3 irq 7 on isa
lpt0: Interrupt-driven port
lp0: TCP/IP capable interface
fdc0 at 0x3f0-0x3f7 irq 6 drq 2 on isa
fd0: 1.44MB 3.5in
ep0 not found at 0x300
bt: unit number (1) too high
bt1 not found at 0x334
vga0 at 0x3b0-0x3bb maddr 0xb0000 msize 32768 on isa
npx0 on motherboard
npx0: INT 16 interface
Waiting 5 seconds for SCSI devices to settle
changing root device to da0s1a
cd0 at bt0 bus 0 target 2 lun 0
cd0: <TOSHIBA CD-ROM XM-3401TA 0283> Removable CD-ROM SCSI-2 device 
cd0: 4.32MB/s transfers (4.32MHz, offset 15)
cd0: cd present [275057 x 2048 byte records]
da0 at bt0 bus 0 target 0 lun 0
da0: <SEAGATE ST15230W SUN4.2G 0738> Fixed Direct Access SCSI-2 device 
da0: 10.0MB/s transfers (10.0MHz, offset 15)
da0: 4095MB (8386733 512 byte sectors: 255H 63S/T 522C)


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