Re: New-bus unit wiring via hints..

On Sat, Oct 27, 2007 at 10:58:56AM -0700, John-Mark Gurney wrote:
> Marcel Moolenaar wrote this message on Sat, Oct 27, 2007 at 10:48 -0700:
> > 
> > On Oct 27, 2007, at 10:42 AM, John-Mark Gurney wrote:
> > 
> > >I believe that the hints is the correct thing, Marcel never  
> > >answered how
> > >to ensure ACPI kept sio0 as COM1,
> > 
> > I did answer that. You obvious did not read or understand a word
> > I was saying...
> 
> Yeh, you're solution was to simply declare that anyone who knows that
> COM1 is at 0x3f8 is wrong, and to use a different, yet again arbitrary
> solution which is which is listed first in ACPI...
> 
> To quote you:
> More legacy PC fixation. If the BIOS claims that COM1 is at 0x2f8 then
> so be it. If COM2 is enumerated first and it ends up as uart0 then so be
> it. There's no bug. It's all in a name. Device wiring would allow people
> to tie COM2 to uart1 if they want to, but all this COM-stuff is really
> nothing more than a fixation on 20-year old conventions that the rest
> of the world abandoned many years ago. It's turned into a bigger problem
> than it really is, mostly because we still have those stupid hints that
> are based on 20-year old conventions.
> 
> So, if one ACPI implementation puts _UID = 0 at 0x3f8, but lists it
> after _UID = 1 at 0x2f8, that it's fine for sio0 to be _UID = 1?  I'm
> fine w/ that...  Just as long as we ship a hints file to keep us old
> farts sane...

Yup.  If I in the BIOS setup screen tells the BIOS that the first serial
port should be at 0x3f8, and the second serial port should be at 0x2f8, then
it is very annoying if FreeBSD attaches sio0 to the serial port at 0x2f8 and
sio1 to the port at 0x3f8 - the opposite of what I wanted.
(This is not a hypothetical example, by the way.)

Being able to tell FreeBSD that sio0 should attach to the serial port at
0x3f8 (which I have told the BIOS to use for the first serial port) and
attach sio1 to the port at 0x2f8 sounds like a very good idea, and the hints
mechanism sounds like the right way to do this.


(Note that I have not said a word in the above about COM1 or COM2.  First
and second port refers to the physical position at the back of the machine.)


> 
> So, why are you continuing to argue about a simple thing that you on your
> machines can simply remove the hints?  What are your technical arguments
> for mandating a different, non-historical, based arbitrary selection?
> 
> -- 
>   John-Mark Gurney				Voice: +1 415 225 5579
> 
>      "All that I will do, has been done, All that I have, has not."
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-- 
<Insert your favourite quote here.>
Erik Trulsson
ertr1013_at_student.uu.se