> The console device can now be selected with a string
> option "CONSDEVNAME": "pc" (default) or
> "com0".."com3".
> The "com" devices correspond to the standard port
> enumeration, don't try to enforce another order in the
> configuration file.

This is silly; there's no reason to hard code that information, and it
makes life a lot harder for some users (e.g. you can't put serial
console or KGDB on a multi-port card using a non-standard address).

This makes life difficult for people who have old, stupid uarts on
their motherboards.  (At least one of my machines is like that.)

Why not allow people to specify:

	"com@0x2f8"

or something similar?

The driver already does the appropriate matching, so even in the
existing code, if you specify CONSDEVNAME as "com3" but that's
actually com67 in your config file, the driver will note that the
right unit is console.  There's no point in having the arbitrary
naming/numbering limitation that you've imposed, is there?

I can think of one reason: compatibility with boot blocks and BIOS
unit numbers.  However, if the boot blocks are so worried about that,
_they_ can do a translation from address back to unit number, for
units that they understand.


chris