Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id ; Thu, 26 Jul 2001 17:13:41 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id ; Thu, 26 Jul 2001 17:13:31 -0400 Received: from atlrel1.hp.com ([156.153.255.210]:48634 "HELO atlrel1.hp.com") by vger.kernel.org with SMTP id ; Thu, 26 Jul 2001 17:13:24 -0400 Message-ID: <3B60880E.9FBAA76B@fc.hp.com> Date: Thu, 26 Jul 2001 15:13:50 -0600 From: Khalid Aziz X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.75 [en] (X11; U; Linux 2.4.5 i686) X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: LKML Subject: Support for serial console on legacy free machines Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Original-Recipient: rfc822;linux-kernel-outgoing I am working on adding support for serial console on legacy free machines. Legacy free machines are not expected to have the legacy COM ports. The serial ports on these machines can exist in I/O space, memory space or they could be PCI devices. This brings up the problem of detecting where the serial console is. This problem is supposed to be solved by ACPI 2.0 tables. The table that gives the details of serial console is "Serial Port Console Redirection" (SPCR) table. This table gives me almost all the information I need to initialize and use a serial console. The bummer is this table was designed by Microsoft and Microsoft owns the copyright on it. Microsoft primarily designed this table for use by Whistler. Their copyright may cause potential problems with using it in Linux. This makes me reluctant to use this table. I would like to know how do others feel about using an ACPI table with Microsoft copyright. I would like to try to push for another table in ACPI spec that is free from copyright by any corporation and is simply a part of spec, if most Linux developers are opposed to using a copyrighted ACPI table. Please ask questions if you need more info. URL for SPCR table definition, if you would like to look at it, is . -- Khalid ==================================================================== Khalid Aziz Linux Systems Operation R&D (970)898-9214 Hewlett-Packard khalid@fc.hp.com Fort Collins, CO - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/