STL(4)

NAME
stl, stli - drivers for Stallion Technologies multiport serial controllers

SYNOPSIS
stl0 at isa? port <addr> tty irq <irq> vector stlintr
stli0 at isa? port <io-addr> tty iomem <mem-addr> iosiz <size> flags <type>
stli0 at eisa? port <io-addr> tty iomem <mem-addr> iosiz <size> flags <type>

DESCRIPTION
This is a kernel driver for Stallion Technologies multiport serial boards. There are two drivers, each supporting a different class of boards. The stl driver supports the EasyIO and EasyConnection 8/32 boards, while the stli driver supports all other types, including ONboard, Brumby and EasyConnection 8/64.

CONFIGURATION
Each board installed in the system needs a configuration entry in the kernel configuration file. Slightly different options and parameters are required for each of the different board types. Depending on the type of board one of the stl or stli drivers will be used. The stl and stli drivers can support up to 8 boards.

Configuration of the hardware - DIP switches, jumpers, etc - varies from board to board. Consult documentation supplied with the board for hardware configuration details. Alternatively the board documentation is available on Stallion Technologies WWW site at http://www.stallion.com.

The EasyIO and EasyConnection 8/32 families of boards use the stl driver. ISA board configuration entries for the stl driver take the general form of:

stlX at isa? port <io-addr> tty irq <irq> vector stlintr

X is the unit number assigned to the board. Any unique value between 0 and 7 is valid.

The I/O address used by the board is specified by <io-addr>. Each of the EasyIO and EasyConnection 8/32-AT boards can use an I/O address in the range from 0 to 0x400.

All EasyIO and EasyConnection 8/32 boards require an interrupt, and this interrupt is specified by <irq>. Legal IRQ values for the ISA boards are 3, 4, 5, 7, 10, 11, 12 and 15. Interrupts are software programmed on all boards except the EasyIO-8M.

The EasyConnection 8/32-AT board uses a secondary I/O address region, and this is fixed at address 0x280 in the driver code. All EasyConnection 8/32-AT boards may share the same secondary address region.

EasyConnection 8/32 PCI boards are detected automatically by the system on boot up. No configuration information is required in advance for these board types. During boot up the stl driver will issue messages to indicate that a EasyConnection 8/32 PCI board was found, and some information about it.

Following are some examples of configuration entries for each of the ISA boards supported by the stl driver. Each example also describes some important details about each of the board types.

Each EasyIO board requires 8 bytes of I/O address space and 1 IRQ line. A configuration entry for an EasyIO board would look like:

stl0 at isa? port 0x2a8 tty irq 15 vector stlintr

This entry specifies an EasyIO board at I/O address 0x2a8 using IRQ 15. The I/O and IRQ values can be modified as required.

Each EasyConnection 8/32-AT board requires 2 sets of I/O addresses and 1 IRQ line. The primary I/O address range is 2 bytes in size, and must be unique to each EasyConnection 8/32-AT board in the system. The secondary I/O address range is 32 bytes in size, but can be shared by multiple EasyConnection 8/32-AT boards. This secondary I/O address is set at 0x280 in the driver code. A configuration entry would look like:

stl0 at isa? port 0x2a0 irq 10 tty vector stlintr

This specifies an EasyConnection 8/32-AT with primary I/O address 0x2a0, secondary I/O address of 0x280 and IRQ 10.

The ONboard, Brumby and EasyConnection 8/64 families of boards use the stli driver. The stli driver supports the ISA and EISA members of these families.

ISA board configuration entries for the stli driver take the general form of:

stliX at isa? port <io-addr> tty iomem <mem-addr> iosiz <size> flags <type>

X is the unit number assigned to the board. Any unique value between 0 and 7 is valid.

The I/O address used by the board is specified by <io-addr>. Each of the different supported board types has restrictions on valid I/O addresses and also the amount of I/O space required varies between the boards.

All boards using the stli driver require a shared memory region to operate. Depending on the board type the region required varies in size from 4 kbytes to 64 kbytes. The size of the board region is specified by field <size> of the configuration entry, and the address of the region is specified by <mem-addr>.

The flags field specifies the particular board type that this entry applies to. Not all board types are distinguishable by the driver at runtime, so this field is required by the driver. Valid board types are:

    BOARD NAME			TYPE	I/O SIZE
    Brumby				  2	0x4000
    ONboard				  4	0x10000
    ONboard/E			  7	0x10000
    EasyConnection 8/64-AT		 23	0x1000
    EasyConnection 8/64-EISA	 24	0x10000

Following are some examples of configuration entries for each of the boards supported by the stli driver. Each example also describes some important details about each of the board types.

The EasyConnection 8/64-AT board requires 4 bytes of I/O address space and 4 kbytes of memory space. A configuration entry would look like:

stli0 at isa? port 0x2a0 tty iomem 0xcc000 iosiz 0x1000 flags 23

The flags field of this entry specifies that this is an EasyConnection 8/64-AT board. It is set to I/O address 0x2a0 and memory address 0xcc000. The iosiz parameter specifies a memory region size of 4 kbytes.

The EasyConnection 8/64-EISA board requires a 64 kbyte region of memory space. This region can be anywhere in the 32 bit memory address space. A configuration entry would be like:

stli0 at eisa? port 0x2000 tty iomem 0x80000000 iosiz 0x10000 flags 24

The flags field is used to specify that this is an EasyConnection 8/64-EISA board. The I/O (port) address resource is derived from the EISA slot that the board is in. Each EISA slot is allocated a section of the I/O address space by the hardware of the system. That address being 0xX000 where X is the slot number. The example board is at memory address 0x80000000 which is 2 Gbyte. The iosiz parameter specifies the size of the memory region, in this case 64 kbytes.

Each ONboard ISA board requires 16 bytes of I/O space and a 64 kbyte section of memory address space. Valid ONboard I/O addresses are in the range 0x200 to 0x300. A configuration entry for an ONboard ISA would look like:

stli0 at isa? port 0x240 tty iomem 0xd0000 iosiz 0x10000 flags 4

This entry specifies an ONboard ISA by setting flags to 4. It uses I/O address 0x240 and a memory region of 64 kbytes at memory address 0xd0000.

Each ONboard/E board requires a 64 kbyte memory region, and this can be anywhere in the 32 bit address space (that is from 0 to 4 Gbyte). A configuration entry would look like:

stli0 at eisa? port 0x3000 tty iomem 0xc0000000 iosiz 0x10000 flags 7

The specifies an ONboard/E in slot 3 using a shared memory address of 0xc0000000 (3 Gbyte).

Each Brumby board requires 16 bytes of I/O address space and a 4 kbyte region of shared memory space. The valid Brumby I/O addresses are in the range 0x300 to 0x400. The shared memory region of the Brumby must be in the 0xc0000 to 0xdc000 region of the memory address space. A configuration entry for a Brumby would be like:

stli0 at isa? port 0x360 tty iomem 0xc8000 iosiz 0x4000 flags 2

This specifies a Brumby board at I/O address 0x360 using a shared memory region at address 0xc8000.

NOTES
When building the device nodes for the ports be sure to use the correct driver name, stl or stli. Each driver has a separate major number allocated, so even though the port device names are the same for each driver, the major number of the device node is different. Use the MAKEDEV(8) script to create the devices. Use the ttyE and cue tag for the stl driver, and the ttyEi and cuei tags for the stli driver.

The intelligent board types (ONboard, Brumby and EasyConnection 8/64) require a firmware download before the ports will be operational. This is achieved by using the stlload command. See its manual page for details on usage.

FILES
/dev/ttyE?
    standard callin devices
/dev/ttyiE?
    initial-state callin devices
/dev/ttylE?
    lock-state callin devices
/dev/cue?
    standard callout devices
/dev/cuie?
    initial-state callout devices
/dev/cule?
    lock-state callout devices
/dev/staliomem?
    board control device

Note that the port numbers start at 0 for port 0 of board 0. Each board has 64 port slots allocated for it. So the second boards ports start at 64 and go through 127. Use the MAKEDEV(8) script to create the devices. Use the ttyE and cue tag for the stl driver, and the ttyEi and cuei tags for the stli driver.

SEE ALSO
stty(1), termios(4), tty(4), comcontrol(8), MAKEDEV(8), stlload(8), stlstats(8)

HISTORY
This driver was originally developed by Greg Ungerer <gerg@stallion.com>.