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From: j@bonnie.heep.sax.de (J Wunsch)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Subject: Re: FreeBSD Hardware Status
Date: 15 Aug 1995 10:33:35 +0200
Organization: Private U**x site, Dresden.
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Message-ID: <40pm4v$ole@bonnie.tcd-dresden.de>
References: <DDAL0I.D75@seas.ucla.edu> <40nqq9$jng@gate.sinica.edu.tw>
Reply-To: joerg_wunsch@uriah.heep.sax.de
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Brian Tao <taob@gate.sinica.edu.tw> wrote:
>> In particular, I need to know when the PS/2 mouse driver will
>>no longer conflict with the video console (I find this very strange and
>>discouraging in an otherwise wonderful OS).
>
> Hmmmm... my LINT has this note attached to the psm driver:
>
># psm: PS/2 mouse port [note: conflicts with sc0/vt0, thus "conflicts" keywd]
>device psm0 at isa? port "IO_KBD" conflicts tty irq 12 vector psmintr
This is logically, given the current console driver status (which is
unlikely to change due to lack of people doing it :).
If you've ever dealt with the way PS/2 mice are connected to the
system, you'll find out that they are sorta a ``second keyboard''.
Either device is connected to the keyboard controller, and both speak
roughly the same protocol. (A simple serial protocol, btw.) So all
mouse events and keyboard events come in intermixed, and what would be
necessary for a clean solution is a separate `kbd' driver that would
decode and dispatch the incoming events.
Unfortunately, for historical reasons, both existing (grafx) console
drivers do handle the keyboard on their own behalf, and there's no
clear interface between the interaction of the keyboard and the output
part of the console driver (consider things like hot key VT switching,
locking keys, LED status changes etc. if you don't understand what i'm
speaking of here).
So unless somebody is really willing to create the Great Unified
Console Driver (tm), the situation is unlikely to change...
--
cheers, J"org private: joerg_wunsch@uriah.heep.sax.de
http://www.sax.de/~joerg/
Never trust an operating system you don't have sources for. ;-)