FreeBSD Man Pages

si(4)

NAME

     si -- driver for Specialix International SI/XIO or SX intelligent serial
     card

SYNOPSIS

     device si

     For ISA host cards put the following lines in /boot/device.hints:
     hint.si.0.at="isa"
     hint.si.0.maddr="0xd0000"
     hint.si.0.irq="12"

DESCRIPTION

     The Specialix SI/XIO and SX hardware makes up an 8 to 32 port RS-232
     serial multiplexor.

     The system uses two components: a "Host adapter", which is plugged into
     an ISA, EISA or PCI slot and provides intelligence and buffering/process-
     ing capabilities, as well as an external bus in the form of a 37 pin
     cable.

     On this cable, "modules" are connected.  The "SI" module comes in a 4 and
     8 port version.  The "XIO" and "SX" modules come only in 8 port versions.

     The host adapter polls and transfers data between the modules and the
     rest of the machine.  The Host adapter provides a 256 byte transmit and
     256 byte receive FIFO for each of the 32 ports that it can maintain.

     The XIO modules can operate each of their 8 ports at 115,200 baud.  The
     SI version can run at 57,600 baud.  The SX modules can operate each of
     their 8 ports at up to 921,600 baud.

     SX modules are only supported when connected to an SX host card.  SI or
     XIO modules are supported on any host card.

     The host adapter uses a shared memory block in the traditional ISA bus
     "hole" between 0xA0000 and 0xEFFFF.  The adapter can be configured out-
     side range, but requires the memory range to be explicitly non-cached.
     The driver does not yet support this mode of operation.

     SX ISA Host cards have an 8/16 bit mode switch or jumper on them.	This
     switch or jumper MUST be set for 8 bit mode.

     The ISA adapters can use Irq's 11, 12 or 15 (and 9 and 10 in the case of
     SX host cards).

     The si device driver may have some of its configuration settings changed
     at run-time with the sicontrol(8) utility.

     The si device driver also responds to the comcontrol(8) utility for con-
     figuring drain-on-close timeouts.

     The driver also defines 3 sysctl variables that can be manipulated:
     machdep.si_debug sets the debug level for the whole driver.  It depends
     on the driver being compiled with SI_DEBUG.  machdep.si_pollrate sets how
     often per second the driver polls for lost interrupts.
     machdep.si_realpoll sets whether or not the card will treat the poll
     the first time.

     Up to four SI/XIO host cards may be controlled by the si driver.  Due to
     the lack of available interrupts, only 3 ISA SI/XIO host cards can be
     used at once.

     The lowest 5 bits of the minor device number are used to select the port
     number on the module cluster.  The next 2 bits select which of 4 host
     adapter cards.  This allows a maximum of 128 ports on this driver.

     Bit 7 is used to differentiate a tty/dialin port (bit 7=0) and a
     cua/callout port (bit 7=1).

     Bit 8 through 15 (on FreeBSD) are unavailable as they are a shadow of the
     major device number.

     If bit 16 is a 1, the device node is referring to the "initial state"
     device.  This "initial state" is used to prime the termios(4) settings of
     the device when it is initially opened.  If bit 17 is a 1, the device
     node is referring to the "locked state" device.  The "locked state" is
     used to prevent the termios(4) settings from being changed.

     To manipulate the initial/locked settings, the stty(1) command is useful.
     When setting the "locked" variables, enabling the mode on the lock device
     will lock the termios mode, while disabling the mode will unlock it.

FILES

     /dev/si_control  global driver control file for sicontrol(8)
     /dev/ttyA*       terminal/dialin ports
     /dev/cuaA*       dialout ports
     /dev/ttyiA*      initial termios state devices
     /dev/ttylA*      locked termios state devices
     /dev/cuaiA*      initial termios state devices for dialout ports
     /dev/cualA*      locked termios state devices for dialout ports

SEE ALSO

     stty(1), sio(4), termios(4), tty(4), comcontrol(8), sicontrol(8)

HISTORY

     This driver is loosely based on driver code originating at Specialix,
     which was ported to run on BSDI by Andy Rutter <andy@specialix.co.uk>.
     The System V driver source is/was available by ftp from
     ftp.specialix.co.uk.

     This driver is not supported by Specialix International.

AUTHORS

     Peter Wemm <peter@netplex.com.au> obtained the code from Andy Rutter and
     ported it to FreeBSD and threw the man page together.  Bruce Evans
     <bde@zeta.org.au> provided a large amount of assistance during porting.
     Nick Sayer <nick@specialix.com> wrote the EISA, PCI and SX portions.

BUGS

     The interrupt tuning rate is not believed to be optimal at this time for
     maximum efficiency.

     Polled mode (a feature of standard Specialix drivers) is not implemented,
     but it can be approximated by turning on machdep.si_realpoll.  The poll

     Multiple host cards are supported although combinations of hosts on dif-
     ferent bus types have not been tested - device numbering is known to be a
     problem and may lead to unexpected results.

FreeBSD 5.4		      September 16, 1995		   FreeBSD 5.4

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