> > So you prefer to have two copies of the driver?

>Two copies of a _front_end_ which will have different console attach
>>semantics.
>
>It's not like very much of the code will be shared, and that which will be
>shared will be trivial.

The console attach semantics for some models appear to be identical.
Most of the rest of the code would be shared.

The existing current frontend to the mi zs driver is already almost
exactly 50% of the size of the former, complete, standalone, scc
driver.  (The copy I'm looking at doesn't have support for frontends
for all Alphastation models.  And at least some Alphas and Decstations
have the same serial-console setup).     

The remainder is *not* trivial: it deals with hardware idiosyncracies
which are common to z8530 devices on DEC ioctl asics (like crosswired
modem control, missing modem control, etc).  Heck, *most* of the code
will be there to handle those idiosyncracies.

For my money, the numbers seem to agree with Christos.