*BSD News Article 16621


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From: terry@cs.weber.edu (A Wizard of Earth C)
Subject: Re: Modem setup on 386BSD [and a further QUESTION]
Message-ID: <1993May30.065415.28948@fcom.cc.utah.edu>
Sender: news@fcom.cc.utah.edu
Organization: Weber State University  (Ogden, UT)
References: <CJB.93May28115334@thrip.cs.uq.oz.au> <1993May28.195017.23712@fcom.cc.utah.edu> <1u81il$o45@wzv.win.tue.nl>
Date: Sun, 30 May 93 06:54:15 GMT
Lines: 34

In article <1u81il$o45@wzv.win.tue.nl> guido@gvr.win.tue.nl (Guido van Rooij) writes:
>terry@cs.weber.edu (A Wizard of Earth C) writes:
>>Interrrupt sharing depnds on being able to ask all devices using the
>>interrupt if they were the one that caused the interrupt -- basically,
>>the interrupt is a "data available" flag.  Most serial hardware doesn't
>>support a flag to indicate data available since last read.  Multiport
>
>Not true. The 8250, 16440, 16450 and friends all have a bit telling if
>this UART triggered the interrupt. (bit 0 in the IIR register).

Hmmm.  I guess I just had a weird UART at the time I arrived at this,
and never bothered to reresearch it.  It was an Intel 320 multiport
board (I-428 board?  Can't remember).

>The reason you can't share interrupts between cards in different slots
>in an isabus system is the fact that you can break your hardware: if
>one card generates an interrupt it wants to hold up, say, the isa bus's
>irq 3 line. But the other card is holding the same line down. Unless you
>designed your system such that this is allowed, normally you have problems.

Of course, the two cards I've checked so far *don't* sink the current
low when the interrupt is not being asserted, so this isn't true either;
I'll try some more cards after I wake up.

Even if this isn't a problem, polling all the cards and reading one byte
from one or more of them is going to limit the overall throughput
something fierce.


					Terry Lambert
					terry@icarus.weber.edu
---
Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present
or previous employers.