1 .\" $FreeBSD: src/share/man/man4/si.4,v 1.20.2.5 2001/08/17 13:08:39 ru Exp $
2 .\" $DragonFly: src/share/man/man4/si.4,v 1.5 2007/07/14 21:56:46 swildner Exp $
8 .Nd "driver for Specialix International SI/XIO or SX intelligent serial card"
11 .Cd "device si0 at isa? irq 12 iomem 0xd0000"
13 The Specialix SI/XIO and SX hardware makes up an 8 to 32 port RS-232 serial
16 The first instance of the device lines above is for EISA and PCI host cards,
17 the second is for ISA host cards.
19 The system uses two components: A "Host adapter", which is plugged into
20 an ISA, EISA or PCI slot and provides intelligence and buffering/processing
21 capabilities, as well as an external bus in the form of a 37 pin cable.
23 On this cable, "modules" are connected. The "SI" module comes in a 4 and 8
24 port version. The "XIO" and "SX" modules come only in
27 The host adapter polls and transfers data between the modules and the rest
29 The Host adapter provides a 256 byte transmit and 256 byte
30 receive FIFO for each of the 32 ports that it can maintain.
32 The XIO modules can operate each of their 8 ports at 115,200 baud.
33 The SI version can run at 57,600 baud.
34 The SX modules can operate each of their
35 8 ports at up to 921,600 baud.
37 SX modules are only supported when connected to an SX host card.
39 XIO modules are supported on any host card.
41 The host adapter uses a shared memory block in the traditional ISA bus
42 "hole" between 0xA0000 and 0xEFFFF. The adapter can be configured outside
43 range, but requires the memory range to be explicitly non-cached. The
44 driver does not yet support this mode of operation.
46 SX ISA Host cards have an 8/16 bit mode switch or jumper on them.
48 or jumper MUST be set for 8 bit mode.
50 The ISA adapters can use Irq's 11, 12 or 15 (and 9 and 10 in the case of
53 The si device driver may have some of its configuration settings changed
58 The si device driver also responds to the
60 utility for configuring drain-on-close timeouts.
62 The driver also defines 3 sysctl variables that can be manipulated:
64 sets the debug level for the whole driver.
66 on the driver being compiled with SI_DEBUG.
67 .Va machdep.si_pollrate
68 sets how often per second the driver polls for lost interrupts.
69 .Va machdep.si_realpoll
70 sets whether or not the card will treat the
71 poll intervals as if they were interrupts.
73 An open on a /dev device node controlled by the si driver obeys the same
76 driver. It fully supports the usual semantics of the cua ports, and the
77 "initial termios" and "locked termios" settings. In summary, an open on a
78 tty port will block until DCD is raised, unless O_NONBLOCK is specified.
79 CLOCAL is honored. An open on a cua port will always succeed, but DCD
80 transitions will be honored after DCD rises for the first time.
82 Up to four SI/XIO host cards may be controlled by the si driver.
83 Due to the lack of available interrupts, only 3 ISA SI/XIO host cards can be
86 The lowest 5 bits of the minor device number are used to select the port
87 number on the module cluster.
88 The next 2 bits select which of 4 host adapter
89 cards. This allows a maximum of 128 ports on this driver.
91 Bit 7 is used to differentiate a tty/dialin port (bit 7=0) and a
92 cua/callout port (bit 7=1).
96 are unavailable as they are a shadow of the
99 If bit 16 is a 1, the device node is referring to the "initial state" device.
100 This "initial state" is used to prime the
102 settings of the device when it is initially opened.
103 If bit 17 is a 1, the device node is referring to the "locked state" device.
104 The "locked state" is used to prevent the
106 settings from being changed.
108 To manipulate the initial/locked settings, the
110 command is useful. When setting the "locked" variables, enabling the mode
111 on the lock device will lock the termios mode, while disabling the mode will
114 .Bl -tag -width /dev/si_control -compact
115 .It Pa /dev/si_control
116 global driver control file for
119 terminal/dialin ports
123 initial termios state devices
125 locked termios state devices
127 initial termios state devices for dialout ports
129 locked termios state devices for dialout ports
139 This driver is loosely based on driver code originating at Specialix, which
140 was ported to run on BSDI by
141 .An Andy Rutter Aq andy@specialix.co.uk .
142 The System V driver source is/was available by ftp from
143 .Sy ftp.specialix.co.uk .
145 This driver is not supported by Specialix International.
148 .An Peter Wemm Aq peter@netplex.com.au
149 obtained the code from
153 and threw the man page together.
154 .An Bruce Evans Aq bde@zeta.org.au
155 provided a large amount of assistance during porting.
156 .An Nick Sayer Aq nick@specialix.com
157 wrote the EISA, PCI and SX portions.
159 The interrupt tuning rate is not believed to be optimal at this time for
162 Polled mode (a feature of standard Specialix drivers) is not implemented,
163 but it can be approximated by turning on
164 .Va machdep.si_realpoll .
165 The poll frequency is set by
166 .Va machdep.si_pollrate
167 (in units of 1/100th of a second).
169 The driver does not yet support baud rates higher than 115,200 on SX
172 Operation outside the traditional ISA "hole" is not yet supported, although it
173 should work if the test is removed from the probe routine.
175 Multiple host cards are supported although combinations of hosts on
176 different bus types have not been tested - device numbering is known to
177 be a problem and may lead to unexpected results.