[Coco] V.PAGE

[Chuck Youse]

On Mon, 2008-07-21 at 12:48 -0400, Robert Gault wrote:

> 
> If you are going to create a system with multiple RS-232 cards or disk 
> controllers, you will need to also create custom drivers as none of the 
> current ones are designed this way.

Except in cases where there would *clearly* never be multiple devices
(e.g., the Coco keyboard/video situation), then you can blame the driver
writers for shorted-sightedness, laziness, or incompetence.  It's clear
that the architects of OS-9 intended for drivers to be used with
multiple instances of device, wherever they might be.  If the device
descriptor has the full address information in it (V.PAGE, V.PORT and
sub-device information on busses like 'drive number' as found in RBF
devices), nothing prevents the driver-writer from supporting multiple
instances except, well, the driver-writer.  The static per-device area
is where one is supposed to track the pertinent state details.

Anyway, yes, this is for custom hardware anyway, so I don't really have
much choice except to write the drivers ... so kind of a pointless
conversation.

C.