I hope this doesn't have to lead to creating a kernel mode module... but I've got a PCM-3640 PC104 card that needs an interface. I understand that none of the standard built in drviers work, although it uses standard 16C550 uarts and standard register addresses.

Anyone have a driver for this? I need to get this card up and running quickly.

For the future, can anyone direct me to a fairly compact "course" on writing drivers. I'm an advanced programmer ( since 1974 ), just little time in Linux ( since 2005, go figure? ).

Dave

Who is the maker of that I/O card?

As far as writing drivers goto http://www.google.com/linux and use the search string ' writing driver ' several links came up. A few I looked at look pretty decent.

Brian1

Brian,

I searched google quite a bit, but I'll try your combination.

The card is an AAEON, PCM-3640. The first two ports can be set to the same settings as the standard COM ports 1 and 2, so I imagine the regular dev/tty... would work, given that the chips are standard. Given that, perhaps there are other +/- standard drivers that would work for the last two?

Dave

Check it out but not be much help on making the ports work.

Brian1

Brian or anyone,

Thanks, I found good information from that "link". But now, I have another related question.

Before I can write a module as I understand it, I must be able to compile it against my kernel source, in a sense assuring that the compiled module is fully compaitble to my kernel. However, I'm using an embedded Linux ( SlackWare ) on a 512MB Flashdisk.... not much room to load and compile all that code ( or is it? ). Right now, I've got about 60MB free memory, and I'm fairly sure that I didn't load the kernel source when loaded my dist.

Questions: Can I load the same kernel source on a bigger machine and do the compiling there, later to install the resulting kernel and driver module(s) onto the smaller embedded platform?

If I recompile the kernel, will I disrupt the present configuration and or potentially have to reload my whole platform ( with all it's tweaks ) again?

I suppose another option is to add a second drive for the compilation and remove it later, but the second question still holds.

If I understand Linux well enough ????, if I recompile the kernel, and it's configured to be the same as what I have running now, I shouldn't have to reload everything, Lilo ( in my case ) will just reload the new kernel which "should" be compatible to my present configuration.

Thanks in advance,
Dave