[TEST/REVIEW/HEADSUP] tty drivers mega-patch

[Poul-Henning Kamp]

In message <20040715171007.X2308 at epsplex.bde.org>, Bruce Evans writes:

>Compatibility is apparently unimportant, since the old names were not
>simply ttyd#* for most multiport drivers.  They were often ttyd##*, where
>the first # is for the adapter (card) and the second number is for the
>port number within the adaptor.

This makes sense.

>'i' and 'l' were intentionally not placed at the end, to keep unit
>numbers at the end and to keep the initial and lock state devices out
>of the normal device namespace (so ttyd* matches only the data devices).

This makes less sense because it prevent us from using 'i' and 'l'
as tty driver identifiers.

>> > I would prefer to stick to the "tty" and "cua" prefixes however.
>
>Actually, cu* makes considerably more sense and is less of an
>anachronism than tty (teletypewriter, remember them? (*)).

I think we should be consistent here, I don't like serial
ports to have names like "ucom" and "uart", "dcons" etc.

>(*) I last saw one in about 1985.  I've seen manual typewriters more
>recently (had some stored in the gararge until 7 years ago).

We have a working ASR33 in our museum and a flexowriter which almost
works again.

-- 
Poul-Henning Kamp       | UNIX since Zilog Zeus 3.20
phk at FreeBSD.ORG         | TCP/IP since RFC 956
FreeBSD committer       | BSD since 4.3-tahoe    
Never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by incompetence.