NAME

intro − introduction to special files and hardware support

DESCRIPTION

This section describes the device interfaces to the operating system for disks, tapes, serial and network communications and other devices.  Software support for these devices comes in two forms.  A hardware device may be supported with a character or block device driver, or it may be used within the networking subsystem and have a network interface driver. Block and character devices are accessed through files in the file system of a special type; see mknod(8). Network interfaces are indirectly accessed through the interprocess communication facilities provided by the system; see socket(2).

Integrated Solutions builds the operating system with all of the devices as appropriate to an LSI-11 or VME bus system listed in Section 4. (If you have a source license, you can generate the system without some of these devices; the only required ones are the drivers for data sink dev/null, null(4); for physical, virtual and I/O memory, mem(4); and for the paging drum, drum(4).  (Refer to the document "Building 4.3BSD UNIX Systems with Config" (SMM:2)).  When the resultant system binary image is booted, the autoconfiguration facilities in the system probe for devices on the bus.  If a device is found, the associated software support is enabled and the system reports the device’s CSR address/interrupt vector in the boot header. 

For the appropriate device description entries in this section, the SYNOPSIS line shows the device’s default Control Status Register (CSR) address and the default interrupt vector. Note that these addresses/vectors can be changed; therefore, the system may report a device at a different address/interrupt vector than that shown in the SYNOPSIS line of the device description at boot time. 

The DIAGNOSTICS section lists messages which may appear on the console and in the system error log /usr/adm/messages due to errors in device operation. 

Section 4 is divided as follows:

4machine-independent device interfaces
4IIntegrated Solutions specific devices
4Nnetworking devices
4Pprotocol devices
4Fprotocol families

The networking support is introduced in intro(4N).

SEE ALSO

intro(4), intro(4N), config(8),
Building 4.3BSD UNIX System with Config in the UNIX System Manager’s Manual (SMM:2)

MAJOR AND MINOR DEVICE NUMBERS

To determine the major and minor numbers of a device, cd to the /dev directory and list the device with the ls −l command, as described in the ls(1) man page.  In the example below, the user listed the special file for the device sm0a. 

% cd /dev
% ls −l sm0a
brw-------  1 root       2,   0   Oct 23   07:34   sm0a
%

The major and minor numbers appear in the place usually reserved for file size (between the name of the owner (root) and the last date of modification (Oct 23)).  In the example above, the major number for this device is 2, and the minor number is 0.

LIST OF DEVICES FOR LSI-11 BUS SYSTEMS

Machine-dependent devices that are supported by Integrated Solution’s LSI-11 Bus-based systems are listed below: dhDH-11 emulators, terminal multiplexor
dlDL-11 terminal multiplexor
dzDZ-11 terminal multiplexor
elextended RL disk interface (winchester)
exExcelan 10Mb/s Ethernet controller
hpSMD disk interface (RP06, RM03, RM05, Eagle, etc.) 
ilInterlan 10Mb/s Ethernet controller
lpLP-11 parallel line printer interface
rkRK6-11/RK06 and RK07 moving head disk
rxDEC RX02 floppy interface
tmTM-11/TE-10 tape drive interface
tsTS-11 tape drive interface

LIST OF DEVICES FOR VME BUS SYSTEMS

Machine-dependent devices that are supported by our VME-based systems are listed below: cpICP8 or ICP16 Intelligent Communications Processor
exExcelan 10Mb/s Ethernet controller
sdSCSI disk adaptor interface
smInterphase SMD disk interface
tstape drive interface
 

4th Berkeley Distribution  —  October 28, 1987