Subject: Killing the old console
To: None <port-acorn32@netbsd.org>
From: Ben Harris <bjh21@NetBSD.org>
List: port-acorn32
Date: 01/31/2004 23:10:16
For some time now, NetBSD/acorn32 has had two sets of console drivers:
the old console, consisting of kbd(4), vidcconsole(4), vt(4), qms(4) and
opms(4), and the new console consisting of rpckbd(4), vidcvideo(4) and
wsqms(4).  The latter interacts with the machine-independent wscons(4)
infrastructure to provide the same set of services as the consoles on
other NetBSD ports.

Before NetBSD 2.0 happens, I think it would be a good idea if we could
purge the old console code from NetBSD/acorn32.  This would remove the
need to maintain a lot of very ugly code, simplify quite a lot of the
remaining code, and probably reduce user confusion if NetBSD/acorn32 has
any users.  The main remaining benefit of the old console code is that it
supports multiple virtual consoles.  Implementing this in the wscons
framework should be possible, but no-one seems to have done it yet.

I'd propose leaving opms(4) in existence for now, simply because we don't
have a way to attach the MI pms(4) driver to the IOMD yet.  This needs to
change, but it's a lower priority.

So, does anyone think that we shouldn't remove the old console?

-- 
Ben Harris                                                   <bjh21@NetBSD.org>
Portmaster, NetBSD/acorn26           <URL:http://www.NetBSD.org/Ports/acorn26/>