Hello all,

As I am sure many of you know, there have been many problems with the ADB
support on newer macs. As one possible solution to this problem, I have been
investigating a way to directly access the ADB hardware instead of using the
Mac ROM Glue (MRG) method. Both methods have advantages and disadvantages
and I thought some testing might be appropiate.

Anyway, I have developed a kernel which works on my IIsi and does NOT use the
MRG code to access the ADB. If there are any brave souls out there who would
be willing to test it on other machines I would appreciate it. It is NOT
completely finished, and I can't guarantee that it will work with anything
at all.

Some details on this kernel:
  This is built from kernel source pulled down 9/12/95 or so.
  It will NOT work on II, IIx, IIcx, IIci, or SE/30 because they 
     use a different ADB format.
  It will probably NOT work on Powerbooks because they (I think) use a 
     different hardware interface.
  It will probably NOT work with desktop 68040 machines if you can't at 
     least get to the "adb: bus subsystem" message with any other kernel. 
  It _may_ work on the following models IF the video support for this 
     kernel supports these machines AND if these machines have an FPU (although
     the still-in-progess(?) FPU emulation may work):
     IIsi, IIvi, IIvx, P600, Classic II, Color Classic I/II, LCII, P400,
     P405, P430, LCIII, P450, LCIII, P550, LC550, P460, P465, P467, MacTV
  It assumes that you have an extended keyboard and a single button mouse ONLY.
  It does not support Ken Nakata's changes to support 3 button mice.
  It does not support NFS.
  It may not work with X. (I do not have X loaded so I cannot test it yet.)
   
If it hangs more than 3 seconds after the "adb: bus subsystem" message, 
try typing a few keys or moving the mouse.

If anyone can test this kernel on their systems and let me know the results, 
it would be really helpful. The image is located at (anonymous ftp):
   ftp.microserve.com  /ppp-pop/jpw/netbsd.9.26.gz
(This site was really slow at times this morning, so please be patient)

You can cpin the file and gunzip it. Remember to not overwrite your good
bootable kernel.

Please send the results directly to me (see below). I will summarize 
the results and post them in a few days. If the results are encouraging, 
I may work on finishing some of the support functions I had left out, like
polling for attached devices, supporting more devices (3 button mice),
supporting more machines (original II series and Powerbooks) and generally
cleaning up the code. (It is a mess right now.)

	--John
          jpw@insoft.com               (work)
          jpw@daedalus.microserve.com  (home)

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 John Wittkoski				InSoft, Inc.
 Senior Systems Engineer                Phone: (717) 730-9501
 Email: jpw@insoft.com                  Fax  : (717) 730-9504
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