On Mon, 23 Sep 1996 08:49:14 +1000 (EST) 
 Andrew Routley <andrew_r@cs.utas.edu.au> wrote:

 > Myself and a couple of friends have a few old 425t machines and want to 
 > install NetBSD on them.  The only problem being that they have Doamin
 > Keyboards rather than HIL.  So the question is...  what would it take for
 > us to design and implement a driver for the Domain Keyboard (including
 > where we might find technical documentation on the keyboard and port)?

I think I have some documentation on the "utility chip" (which is
where the Domain keyboard port lives...)  I'll have to dig it up (it's
buried in my extremely disorganized pile of misc. hp300 documentation).

The utility chip implements, among other things, 4 (I think) 16550-like
UARTs.  One of these UARTs is the domain keyboard port.  (I think the
utility chip also has the PIC for the optional Strider EISA bus...)

I _think_ the keyboard is 1200-8N1 serial .. I don't know the exact
pinout... Herb?  (Is this a FAQ now? :-)

As far as gluing it into the kernel... that's a whole other problem...

Making it work with the ITE would mean finding all of the assumptions
of HIL in the console code, and chaning the interface to deal with both
types... also, the console probe code would have to determine what sort
of keyboard was there... This means a good bit of code restructuring.
It would be a lot easier with:

	a) A different console interface (more like fbio/wscons, a'la
	   the alpha port)

	b) (please, oh please don't laugh...) new config

(a) can't really happen without (b), and (b) is _a lot_ of code
restructuring/re-write.

However, don't let these things discourage you :-)  We could alway
Just Get It Working first, and maybe have a compile-time option to get
the right keyboard (that seems acceptable to be as a short-term,
temporary fix).

That said, I'm not going to have the time to do this work myself.  However,
I'll gladly assist someone else (where assist is defined as answer
questions, give architectural advice, and, eventually, commit the code).

Ciao.

 -- save the ancient forests - http://www.bayarea.net/~thorpej/forest/ -- 
Jason R. Thorpe                                       thorpej@nas.nasa.gov
NASA Ames Research Center                               Home: 408.866.1912
NAS: M/S 258-6                                          Work: 415.604.0935
Moffett Field, CA 94035                                Pager: 415.428.6939