Subject: Re: maple_attach_dev
To: None <port-dreamcast@netbsd.org>
From: Marcus Comstedt <marcus@idonex.se>
List: port-dreamcast
Date: 03/17/2001 05:27:20
Hm, the more I think about it, the more I figure Andrew was probably
on to something.

If this "mmf" device were to get its own major number, you could use
it as an interface to send raw Maple packets to the device (provided
you have write access to the device node), and to query the device
name, power consumption, etc in a device independant way.  The first
would be useful to control devices from userland which don't have a
specific driver yet (a bit dangerous though, since you don't want
programs to do that after you do attach a specific driver), the second
would be for "system monitor" type programs (always safe, just an
ioctl to get the device info struct).

So, what do you think?  We'd have to come up with a better name than
"mmf" though.  :-)  And it shouldn't be "mmf0", "mmf1" etc, it should
really be mmfa2 for port A subunit 2 etc, as that's how you'd want the
device nodes named.  (Is it possible?)


  // Marcus