.Dd July 8, 2017 .Dt SI 4 .Os .Sh NAME .Nm si .Nd "driver for Specialix International SI/XIO or SX intelligent serial card" .Sh SYNOPSIS .Cd "device si"
p For ISA host cards put the following lines in
a /boot/device.hints : .Cd hint.si.0.at="isa" .Cd hint.si.0.maddr="0xd0000" .Cd hint.si.0.irq="12" .Sh DEPRECATION NOTICE The .Nm driver will be removed in .Fx 12.0 . .Sh DESCRIPTION The Specialix SI/XIO and SX hardware makes up an 8 to 32 port RS-232 serial multiplexor.
p The system uses two components: a "Host adapter", which is plugged into an ISA, EISA or PCI slot and provides intelligence and buffering/processing capabilities, as well as an external bus in the form of a 37 pin cable.
p 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.
p 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.
p 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.
p SX modules are only supported when connected to an SX host card. SI or XIO modules are supported on any host card.
p The host adapter uses a shared memory block in the traditional ISA bus "hole" between 0xA0000 and 0xEFFFF. The adapter can be configured outside range, but requires the memory range to be explicitly non-cached. The driver does not yet support this mode of operation.
p 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.
p The ISA adapters can use Irq's 11, 12 or 15 (and 9 and 10 in the case of SX host cards).
p The si device driver may have some of its configuration settings changed at run-time with the .Xr sicontrol 8 utility.
p The si device driver also responds to the .Xr comcontrol 8 utility for configuring drain-on-close timeouts.
p 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 intervals as if they were interrupts.
p An open on a /dev device node controlled by the si driver obeys the same semantics as the .Xr sio 4 driver. It fully supports the usual semantics of the cua ports, and the "initial termios" and "locked termios" settings. In summary, an open on a tty port will block until DCD is raised, unless O_NONBLOCK is specified. CLOCAL is honored. An open on a cua port will always succeed, but DCD transitions will be honored after DCD rises for the first time.
p 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.
p 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.
p Bit 7 is used to differentiate a tty/dialin port (bit 7=0) and a cua/callout port (bit 7=1).
p Bit 8 through 15 (on .Fx ) are unavailable as they are a shadow of the major device number.
p If bit 16 is a 1, the device node is referring to the "initial state" device. This "initial state" is used to prime the .Xr 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 .Xr termios 4 settings from being changed.
p To manipulate the initial/locked settings, the .Xr 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. .Sh FILES l -tag -width /dev/si_control -compact t Pa /dev/si_control global driver control file for .Xr sicontrol 8 t Pa /dev/ttyA* terminal/dialin ports t Pa /dev/cuaA* dialout ports t Pa /dev/ttyiA* initial termios state devices t Pa /dev/ttylA* locked termios state devices t Pa /dev/cuaiA* initial termios state devices for dialout ports t Pa /dev/cualA* locked termios state devices for dialout ports .El .Sh SEE ALSO .Xr stty 1 , .Xr sio 4 , .Xr termios 4 , .Xr tty 4 , .Xr comcontrol 8 , .Xr sicontrol 8 .Sh HISTORY This driver is loosely based on driver code originating at Specialix, which was ported to run on BSDI by .An Andy Rutter Aq andy@specialix.co.uk . The System V driver source is/was available by ftp from .Sy ftp.specialix.co.uk .
p This driver is not supported by Specialix International. .Sh AUTHORS .An -nosplit .An Peter Wemm Aq peter@netplex.com.au obtained the code from .An Andy Rutter and ported it to .Fx and threw the man page together. .An Bruce Evans Aq bde@zeta.org.au provided a large amount of assistance during porting. .An Nick Sayer Aq nick@specialix.com wrote the EISA, PCI and SX portions. .Sh BUGS The interrupt tuning rate is not believed to be optimal at this time for maximum efficiency.
p Polled mode (a feature of standard Specialix drivers) is not implemented, but it can be approximated by turning on machdep.si_realpoll. The poll frequency is set by machdep.si_pollrate (in units of 1/100th of a second).
p The driver does not yet support baud rates higher than 115,200 on SX modules.
p Operation outside the traditional ISA "hole" is not yet supported, although it should work if the test is removed from the probe routine.
p Multiple host cards are supported although combinations of hosts on different bus types have not been tested - device numbering is known to be a problem and may lead to unexpected results.