Gregory McGarry wrote:
> I've got some PCI and VME acquisition boards I'm currently looking
> at supporting.  So I'm looking at doing a machine-independent interface.

I think that'd be a great idea.  There are a myriad of data acquisition
devices out there, and a framework where you simply plug in device specific
stuff would be nice to have.

> I'm thinking of having three minor device numbers to access analogue I/O,
> digital I/O and timers/counters.  All I/O should support DMA and
> polled I/O. 

You also need to support IRQ based transfers.  The boards I've been dealing
with are using ports and IRQs. 

I think it'd be good to start out with a small subset of all the permutations
and see if the concept works.

> Time-stamping of polled I/O would be good. 

Yeah.

> The counters and
> timers could attach the watchdog framework and be useful for ntp.

Hmm.  And you want this part to happen in userland, right?

> I'd also like to attach audio(9) for an eight channel microphone array.
> 
> Lots of ideas and options.  The hard part is to develop the MI interface
> which doesn't limit these ideas.  Other than that, it shouldn't take long
> to implement.  Don't hold you breath though, I won't be starting this
> for a while yet.
> 
> Any further ideas are welcome.  If you want to help design the API that
> would be great.

I'd happy to contribute, time permitting.  I'll probably proceed and try to
implement my stuff without waiting for this, though.  I'm still looking for
pointers, too, on my original question.

Cheers,
Chris