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Stallion Multiport Serial Driver Readme

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Copyright (C) 1994-1998,  Stallion Technologies (support@stallion.com).

Version:   5.4.4

Date:      20MAR98

1. INTRODUCTION

This is a Linux driver for some of the Stallion Technologies range of

multiport serial boards. There are really two drivers in this package.

One is for the Stallion smart boards, the other for the true Stallion

intelligent multiport boards.

The drivers included in this package are intended as a replacement for

those shipped with Linux kernel versions in the 2.0.X series. For later

versions of the kernel (2.1.0 and above) use the driver source supplied

with the kernel. The drivers in this package specifically add support

for the most recent releases of Stallion hardware - which are not supported

in the Stallion drivers supplied in the 2.0.X kernels. The drivers in this

package do not support kernel versions earlier than 2.0.0.

The other utilities supplied in this package can be used with Stallion

drivers on any version of the kernel.

If you have any trouble getting Stallion boards to work in Linux systems,

please contact Stallion Technologies support department via email or phone.

Contact information for Stallion Technologies offices is included in the

file "Offices" contained in this distribution.

Please note the disclaimers set out in the GNU general public license

included with this driver package.

All host driver source is included in this package, and is copyrighted under

the GNU GPL. The board "firmware" code in this package is copyright Stallion

Technologies (the files cdk.sys and 2681.sys).

1.1 SMART MULTIPORT BOARD DRIVER

This driver supports the EasyIO and EasyConnection 8/32 range of boards.

These boards are not classic intelligent multiport boards, but are host

based multiport boards that use Cirrus Logic CL-CD1400 UART's, or on

newer versions of the hardware use the Signetics 26C198 UART. Both of

these are high performance UART's with built in FIFO's, automatic flow

control and a host of other features.

The EasyIO range of cards comes in 4 forms, the EasyIO-4, EasyIO-8,

EasyIO-8M and EasyIO-8-PCI. The first three are ISA based boards while

the last is a PCI bus board. All of these are non-expandable, low cost,

multiport boards with 4 or 8 RS-232C ports. Each ISA EasyIO board requires 8

bytes of I/O address space and 1 interrupt. The PCI EasyIO board uses 64

bytes of I/O address space and 1 interrupt. On EISA and PCI systems it is

possible to share 1 interrupt between multiple boards. The EasyIO-4 has 10

pin RJ connectors, and the EasyIO-8 comes with a dongle cable with either 10

pin RJ connectors or DB-25 connectors. The EasyIO-8M has 6 pin RJ connectors.

The EasyConnection 8/32 family of boards is a relatively low cost modular

range of multiport serial boards. The EasyConnection 8/32 boards can be

configured to have from 8 to 32 serial ports by plugging in external serial

port modules that contain either 8 or 16 ports each. There is a wide range

of external modules available that offer: DB-25 connectors, RJ-45 connectors

(both with RS-232 D and E compatible drivers), and also RS-422 and RS-485

ports. The EasyConnection 8/32 boards come in ISA, PCI and MCA bus versions.

The board takes the form of a host adapter card, with an external connector

cable that plugs into the external modules. The external modules just clip

together to add ports (BTW, they are NOT hot pluggable). Each ISA

EasyConnection 8/32 board requires two separate I/O address ranges, one two

bytes in size and a secondary region of 32 bytes. Each PCI EasyConnection

8/32 requires two regions of I/O address space, normally these will be

automatically allocated by the system BIOS at power on time. Each MCA

EasyConnection board requires one I/O address region 64 bytes in size. All

board types also require one interrupt. On EISA systems multiple boards can

share one interrupt. The secondary I/O range of the ISA board (the 32 byte

range) can be shared between multiple boards on any bus type.

The EasyConnection 8/64-PCI family is similar to the EasyConnection 8/32-PCI

board, and uses the same external modules. It is supported by the smart

board driver - not the intelligent board driver. It uses 2 regions of I/O

address space, both 64 bytes in size, and 1 interrupt.

1.2 INTELLIGENT MULTIPORT BOARD DRIVER

This driver is for Stallion's range of true intelligent multiport boards.

It supports the EasyConnection 8/64, ONboard and Brumby families of multiport

boards. The EasyConnection 8/64 and ONboard boards come in ISA, EISA and

Microchannel bus versions. The Brumby boards are only available in ISA

versions. This driver can also work with the original Stallion board, but

these are no longer supported by Stallion Technologies.

The EasyConnection 8/64 family of boards is a medium cost, high performance,

modular range of intelligent multiport serial boards. The EasyConnection 8/64

boards can be configured to have from 8 to 64 serial ports by plugging in

external serial port modules that contain either 8 or 16 ports each (these

modules are the same used by the EasyConnection 8/32 board). There is a wide

range of external modules available that offer: DB-25 connectors, RJ-45

connectors (both with RS-232 D and E compatible drivers), and also RS-422 and

RS-485 ports. The board takes the form of a host adapter card, with an external

connector cable that plugs into the external modules. The external modules

just clip together to add ports (BTW, they are NOT hot pluggable). Each

EasyConnection 8/64 board requires 4 bytes of I/O address space and a region

of memory space. The size of the memory region required depends on the exact

board type. The EISA version requires 64 Kbytes of address space (that can

reside anywhere in the 4 Gigabyte physical address space). The ISA and MCA

boards require 4 Kbytes of address space (which must reside in the lower

1 Mbyte of physical address space - typically in the c8000 to e0000 range).

No interrupts are required. The physical memory region of multiple

EasyConnection 8/64 boards can be shared, but each board must have a separate

I/O address.

The ONboard family of boards are traditional intelligent multiport serial

boards. They are Stallion's older range of boards with a limited expansion

capability. They come in 4, 8, 12, 16 and 32 port versions. The board uses

the same base card (which has 4 ports on it) and is expanded to more ports via

a mezzanine board that attaches directly onto the base card. External panels

plug into the ONboard providing RS-232C ports with DB-25 plugs. An RS-422

DB-25 dual interface panel is also available. The ISA and microchannel

ONboards require 16 bytes of I/O address space and 64K bytes of memory

space. The memory space can be anywhere in the 16 Mbyte ISA bus address

range. No interrupt is required. The EISA ONboard requires 64 Kbytes of

memory space that can be anywhere in the 4 Gigabyte physical address space.

All ONboard boards can share their memory region with other ONboards (or

EasyConnection 8/64 boards).

The Brumby family of boards are traditional, low cost intelligent multiport

serial boards. They are non-expandable and come in 4, 8 and 16 port versions.

They are only available for the ISA bus. The serial ports are all on DB-25

"dongle" cables that attach to the rear of the board. Each Brumby board

requires 16 bytes of I/O address space and 16 Kbytes of memory space. No

interrupts are required.

The original Stallion boards are old. They went out of production some years

back and are no longer supported. They offer limited expandability and are

available in 8 or 16 port configurations. An external panel houses 16 RS-232C

ports with DB-9 connectors. They require 16 bytes of I/O address space, and

either 64K or 128K of memory space. No interrupt is required.

That's the boards supported by the second driver. The ONboard, Brumby and

Stallion boards are Stallion's older range of intelligent multiports - so

there are lots of them around. They only support a maximum baud rate of

38400. The EasyConnection 8/64 is a true high performance intelligent

multiport board, having much greater throughput than any of Stallion's

older boards. It also supports speeds up to 460800 baud.

1.3 HOW TO GET BOARDS

Stallion Technologies has offices all over the world, as well as many more

distributors and resellers. To find out about local availability please

contact the nearest Stallion office and they can give you all the information

you need. Look in the "Offices" file in the driver package for a current list

of Stallion Technologies offices.

Another good source of information about the Stallion range of boards and

local availability is on the Stallion Web page. Check it out at

http://www.stallion.com.

2. INSTALLATION

This version of the driver is intended for kernel versions 2.0.0 and later.

It will not work on earlier kernel versions, due to kernel interface changes.

(Note that older versions of these drivers do work on older kernels.)

If you are using a more recent development kernel (versions 2.1.X and

greater) you should use the Stallion drivers supplied with that kernel,

they are more up to date.

The drivers can be used as loadable modules or compiled into the kernel.

Depending on which form of driver loading you decide to use, the installation

procedure will be a little different.

All ISA, EISA and MCA boards that you want to use need to be entered into

the driver(s) configuration structures. PCI boards will be automatically

detected when you load the driver - so they do not need to be entered into

the driver(s) configuration structure. (Note that kernel PCI BIOS32 support

is required to use PCI boards.)

Entering ISA, EISA and MCA boards into the driver(s) configuration structure

involves editing the driver(s) source file. It's pretty easy if you follow

the instructions below. Both drivers can support up to 4 boards. The smart

card driver supports any combination of EasyIO, EasyConnection 8/32 and

EasyConnection 8/64-PCI boards (up to a total of 4). The intelligent driver

supports any combination of ONboards, Brumbys, Stallions and

EasyConnection 8/64 boards (up to a total of 4).

2.1 LOADABLE MODULE DRIVERS

You will need the gcc compiler and make installed on your system to make the

driver modules. You will also need to have the kernel source on the system,

and have at least done a "make config" and "make dep" on it. (If you haven't

done this before then you may want to read the kernel source README file,

usually found in /usr/src/linux.)

To build the driver modules:

1. Setup the driver configuration for the boards. If using EasyIO or

   EasyConnection 8/32 ISA or MCA boards, do:

   vi stallion.c

      - find the definition of the stl_brdconf array (of structures)

        near the top of the file

      - modify this to match the boards you are going to install

        (the comments before this structure should help)

      - save and exit

   If using ONboard, Brumby, Stallion or EasyConnection 8/64 boards then do:

   vi istallion.c

      - find the definition of the stli_brdconf array (of structures)

        near the top of the file

      - modify this to match the boards you are going to install

        (the comments before this structure should help)

      - save and exit

2. cp stallion.h cd1400.h sc26198.h /usr/include/linux/include/linux

   cp istallion.h cdk.h comstats.h /usr/include/linux/include/linux

3. make modules

   This will compile the driver modules, as stallion and istallion.

The stallion module is the EasyIO, EasyConnection 8/32 and

EasyConnection 8/64-PCI driver, the istallion module is the ONboard,

Brumby, Stallion and EasyConnection 8/64 driver.

To load up the smart board driver use:

    insmod ./stallion

This will load the EasyIO and EasyConnection 8/32 driver. It will output a

message to say that it loaded and print the driver version number. It

will also print out whether it found the configured boards or not. (These

messages may appear in your /var/adm/messages file depending on how the

klogd and syslogd daemons are setup on your system).

To load the intelligent board driver use:

    insmod ./istallion

It will output similar messages to the smart board driver.

2.2 STATIC DRIVERS (KERNEL LINKED)

You will need to build a new kernel to link in the Stallion drivers. The first

thing you need is to have the full kernel source. Most people will have this.

The following assumes that the kernel source is in /usr/src/linux.

To install the drivers:

1. cp stallion.c istallion.c /usr/src/linux/drivers/char

   cp stallion.h cd1400.h sc26198.h /usr/include/linux/include/linux

   cp istallion.h cdk.h comstats.h /usr/include/linux/include/linux

2. cd /usr/src/linux/drivers/char

3. Setup the driver configuration for the boards. If using EasyIO,

   EasyConnection 8/32 or EasyConnection 8/64-PCI boards, do:

   vi stallion.c

      - find the definition of the stl_brdconf array (of structures)

        near the top of the file

      - modify this to match the boards you are going to install

        (the comments before this structure should help)

      - save and exit

   If using ONboard, Brumby, Stallion or EasyConnection 8/64 boards then do:

   vi istallion.c

      - find the definition of the stli_brdconf array (of structures)

        near the top of the file

      - modify this to match the boards you are going to install

        (the comments before this structure should help)

      - save and exit

4. cd /usr/src/linux

5. build a new kernel - if you haven't done this before you may want to

   read the README file in /usr/src/linux.

Once you have a new kernel built, reboot to start it up. On startup the

driver will output a message to say it is operational (with the driver

version number). It will also print out if it could find the boards listed

in its configuration structure or not.

2.3 INTELLIGENT DRIVER OPERATION

The intelligent boards also need to have their "firmware" code downloaded

to them. This is done via a user level application supplied in the driver

package called "stlload". Compile this program where ever you dropped the

package files, by typing "make". In its simplest form you can then type

    ./stlload -i cdk.sys

in this directory and that will download board 0 (assuming board 0 is an

EasyConnection 8/64 board). To download to an ONboard, Brumby or Stallion do:

    ./stlload -i 2681.sys

Normally you would want all boards to be downloaded as part of the standard

system startup. To achieve this, add one of the lines above into the

/etc/rc.d/rc.S or /etc/rc.d/rc.serial file. To download each board just add

the "-b " option to the line. You will need to download code for

every board. You should probably move the stlload program into a system

directory, such as /usr/sbin. Also, the default location of the cdk.sys image

file in the stlload down-loader is /usr/lib/stallion. Create that directory

and put the cdk.sys and 2681.sys files in it. (It's a convenient place to put

them anyway). As an example your /etc/rc.d/rc.S file might have the

following lines added to it (if you had 3 boards):

    /usr/sbin/stlload -b 0 -i /usr/lib/stallion/cdk.sys

    /usr/sbin/stlload -b 1 -i /usr/lib/stallion/2681.sys

    /usr/sbin/stlload -b 2 -i /usr/lib/stallion/2681.sys

The image files cdk.sys and 2681.sys are specific to the board types. The

cdk.sys will only function correctly on an EasyConnection 8/64 board. Similarly

the 2681.sys image fill only operate on ONboard, Brumby and Stallion boards.

If you load the wrong image file into a board it will fail to start up, and

of course the ports will not be operational!

If you are using the module version of the driver you might want to put the

insmod calls in the startup script as well (before the download lines

obviously).

2.4 SHARING INTERRUPTS

As mentioned in the introduction, it is possible to share interrupts between

multiple EasyIO and EasyConnection 8/32 boards in an EISA system. To do this

you will need to do a couple of things:

1. When entering the board resources into the stallion.c file you need to

   mark the boards as using level triggered interrupts. Do this by replacing

   the "0" entry at field position 6 (the last field) in the board

   configuration structure with a "1". (This is the structure that defines

   the board type, I/O locations, etc. for each board). All boards that are

   sharing an interrupt must be set this way, and each board should have the

   same interrupt number specified here as well. Now build the module or

   kernel as you would normally.

2. When physically installing the boards into the system you must enter

   the system EISA configuration utility. You will need to install the EISA

   configuration files for *all* the EasyIO and EasyConnection 8/32 boards

   that are sharing interrupts. The Stallion EasyIO and EasyConnection 8/32

   EISA configuration files required are supplied by Stallion Technologies

   on the DOS Utilities floppy (usually supplied in the box with the board

   when purchased. If not, you can pick it up from Stallion's FTP site

   ftp.stallion.com or web site http://www.stallion.com). You will need to

   edit the board resources to choose level triggered interrupts, and make

   sure to set each board's interrupt to the same IRQ number.

You must complete both the above steps for this to work. When you reboot

or load the driver your EasyIO and EasyConnection 8/32 boards will be

sharing interrupts.

2.5 USING HIGH SHARED MEMORY

The EasyConnection 8/64-EI, ONboard and Stallion boards are capable of

using shared memory addresses above the usual 640K - 1Mb range. The ONboard

ISA and the Stallion boards can be programmed to use memory addresses up to

16Mb (the ISA bus addressing limit), and the EasyConnection 8/64-EI and

ONboard/E can be programmed for memory addresses up to 4Gb (the EISA bus

addressing limit).

The istallion driver offers direct support for these higher memory regions.

To use them just enter the high memory address as if it were a low memory

address (in the driver board configuration structure).

2.6 LINUX KERNEL VERSIONS 2.1.X

There may be some minor differences between the driver source code in this

package and that in the Linux kernel source. This will be due to changes

needed in the drivers so that they work correctly on newer kernels. The

driver source included in this package is intended for use with 2.0.X

series kernels. If you have a kernel version 2.1.0 or later then use the

source provided with the kernel - it will be more up to date. Stallion

Technologies regularly submits the latest driver source to be included in

the new kernel source releases.

2.7 TROUBLE SHOOTING

If a board is not found by the driver but is actually in the system then the

most likely problem is that the I/O address is wrong. Change it in the driver

stallion.c or istallion.c configuration structure and rebuild the kernel

or modules, or change it on the board. On EasyIO and EasyConnection 8/32

boards the IRQ is software programmable, so if there is a conflict you may

need to change the IRQ used for a board in the stallion.c configuration

structure. There are no interrupts to worry about for ONboard, Brumby,

Stallion or EasyConnection 8/64 boards. The memory region on EasyConnection

8/64 and ONboard boards is software programmable, but not on the Brumbys or

Stallions.

3. USING THE DRIVERS

Once the driver is installed you will need to setup some device nodes to

access the serial ports. Use the supplied "mkdevnods" script to automatically

create all required device entries for one board. This will create the normal

serial port devices as /dev/ttyE# where # is the port number starting from 0.

A set of callout type devices is also created. They are created as the devices

/dev/cue# where # is the same as for the ttyE devices.

A bank of 64 minor device numbers is allocated to each board. To create

device nodes for ports on multiple boards supply a number of boards argument

to the "mkdevnods" script. For example to create nodes for four boards use

"mkdevnods 4". This means that the first port on the second board is port 64,

the first port on the third board is 128, etc.

For the most part the Stallion driver tries to emulate the standard PC system

COM ports and the standard Linux serial driver. The idea is that you should

be able to use Stallion board ports and COM ports interchangeably without

modifying anything but the device name. Anything that doesn't work like that

should be considered a bug in this driver!

If you look at the driver code you will notice that it is fairly closely

based on the Linux serial driver (linux/drivers/char/serial.c). This is

intentional, obviously this is the easiest way to emulate its behavior!

Since this driver tries to emulate the standard serial ports as much as

possible, most system utilities should work as they do for the standard

COM ports. Most importantly "stty" works as expected and "setserial" can be

also be used (excepting the ability to auto-configure the I/O and IRQ

addresses of boards). Higher baud rates are supported in the usual fashion

through setserial or using the CBAUDEX extensions. Note that the EasyIO and

EasyConnection (all types) support 57600 and 115200 baud, and the newer XP

versions also support 230400 and 460800 baud. The older boards including

ONboard, Brumby and the original Stallion support a maximum baud rate of

38400.

This driver should work with anything that works on standard Linux serial

ports. Having said that, it has been used on at least the following types of

"things" under Linux:

    a) standard dumb terminals (using agetty, getty)

    b) serial mice (under X)

    c) modems (using cu, uucp, minicom, seyon, uugetty)

    d) slip and ppp connections

If you are unfamiliar with how to use serial ports, then get the Serial-HOWTO

by Greg Hankins. It will explain everything you need to know!

4. NOTES

The major device numbers used by this driver are conformant with the Linux

Device Registry, so they shouldn't clash with any other devices. Also the

device naming scheme is the "standard" used by most Linux serial port

devices.

You can use both drivers at once if you have a mix of board types installed

in a system. However to do this you will need to change the major numbers

used by one of the drivers. Currently both drivers use major numbers 24, 25

and 28 for their devices. Change one driver to use some other major numbers,

and then modify the mkdevnods script to make device nodes based on those new

major numbers. For example, you could change the istallion.c driver to use

major numbers 60, 61 and 62. You will also need to create device nodes with

different names for the ports, for example ttyF# and cuf#.

Finding a free physical memory address range can be a problem. The older

boards like the Stallion and ONboard need large areas (64K or even 128K), so

they can be very difficult to get into a system. If you have 16 Mb of RAM

then you have no choice but to put them somewhere in the 640K -> 1Mb range.

ONboards require 64K, so typically 0xd0000 is good, or 0xe0000 on some

systems. If you have an original Stallion board, "V4.0" or Rev.O,

then you need a 64K memory address space, so again 0xd0000 and 0xe0000 are

good. Older Stallion boards are a much bigger problem. They need 128K of

address space and must be on a 128K boundary. If you don't have a VGA card

then 0xc0000 might be usable - there is really no other place you can put

them below 1Mb.

Both the ONboard and old Stallion boards can use higher memory addresses as

well, but you must have less than 16Mb of RAM to be able to use them. Usual

high memory addresses used include 0xec0000 and 0xf00000.

The Brumby boards only require 16Kb of address space, so you can usually

squeeze them in somewhere. Common addresses are 0xc8000, 0xcc000, or in

the 0xd0000 range. EasyConnection 8/64 boards are even better, they only

require 4Kb of address space, again usually 0xc8000, 0xcc000 or 0xd0000

are good.

If you are using an EasyConnection 8/64-EI or ONboard/E then usually the

0xd0000 or 0xe0000 ranges are the best options below 1Mb. If neither of

them can be used then the high memory support to use the really high address

ranges is the best option. Typically the 2Gb range is convenient for them,

and gets them well out of the way.

There is a new utility program included called "stlstty". Most people

will not need to use this. If you have an ONboard/16 which has partial

signals on the upper 12 ports then this program can be used to set the

upper ports to have modem control instead of hardware flow control. Use

the "mapcts maprts" flag options to this utility on the port(s) that you

wish to do this mapping on, eg

    ./stlstty maprts mapcts < /dev/cue0

This enables RTS to act like DTR and CTS to act like DCD on the specified

port.

The ports of the EasyIO-8M board do not have DCD or DTR signals. So these

ports cannot be used as real modem devices. Generally when using these

ports you should only use the cueX devices.

There is another new utility in this package that reports statistics on

the serial ports. You will need to have the curses libray installed on

your system to build it.

To build the statistics display program type:

    make stlstats

Once compiled simply run it (you will need to be root) and it will display

a port sumary for the first board and panel installed. Use the digits to

select different board numbers, or 'n' to cycle through the panels on a

board. To look at detailed port information then hit 'p', that will display

detailed port 0 information. Use the digits and letters 'a' through 'f' to

select the different ports (on this board and panel).

5. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This driver is loosely based on code written by Theodore T'so, Linus

Torvalds, and others, so a big thanks to them all.

6. DISCLAIMER

The information contained in this document is believed to be accurate and

reliable. However, no responsibility is assumed by Stallion Technologies

Pty. Ltd. for its use, nor any infringements of patents or other rights

of third parties resulting from its use. Stallion Technologies reserves

the right to modify the design of its products and will endeavour to change

the information in manuals and accompanying documentation accordingly.