Subject: Re: Arcnet-driver
To: None <NetBSD-Dev@cbmuucp.commodore.com>
From: Ty Sarna <tsarna@endicor.com>
List: amiga-dev
Date: 02/09/1994 07:04:46
In article <9402082245.AA22151@jade.techfak.uni-bielefeld.de> markus@TechFak.Uni-Bielefeld.DE (Markus Illenseer) writes:
> I am currently in the nice position to have two Amiga's connected
> with ArcNet (A2060). The problem is that i'd need any source code
> for a 2060.device in order to be able to write a, hm, a0 driver
> for NetbSD-Amiga. 

I don't know if you could get a2060.device source code from Commodore,
but the binary is only about 5.5K, so programming it can't be too
difficult. Since it's so small, you could probably even disassemble it
and figure it out fairly easily (relative to disassembling a scsi driver
or something). You might also see what chip is on the board, and see if
NetBSD/i386 has a driver for it (I don't know if they have any arcnet
drivers,but it's worth looking).

> I want to try out if it is possible to make the driver somewhat transparent
> so that all the other clients like ifconfig will work with it assuming
> the card is a ethernet-card rather than arcnet, if this is not possible
> i go the easy way, but then we probabl will have to change some other
> parts of other sources...

You don't want to do this, any more than you'd want a slip driver that
looked like ethernet. There is a RFC for IP-on-arcnet which you'll want
to get and follow. It shouldn't be very difficult, and will probably
work better (and be more compatible) that way. ifconfig & co shouldn't
need any changes, since the if (interface) ioctls are designed to be
fairly device-independant.

-- 
Ty Sarna                 "As you know, Joel, children have always looked
tsarna@endicor.com        up to cowboys as role models. And vice versa."


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