From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: from e35.co.us.ibm.com (e35.co.us.ibm.com [32.97.110.153]) (using TLSv1 with cipher DHE-RSA-AES256-SHA (256/256 bits)) (Client CN "e35.co.us.ibm.com", Issuer "Equifax" (verified OK)) by ozlabs.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 13F9FDDE1D for ; Fri, 28 Sep 2007 02:54:26 +1000 (EST) Received: from d03relay02.boulder.ibm.com (d03relay02.boulder.ibm.com [9.17.195.227]) by e35.co.us.ibm.com (8.13.8/8.13.8) with ESMTP id l8RGsDUk029628 for ; Thu, 27 Sep 2007 12:54:13 -0400 Received: from d03av02.boulder.ibm.com (d03av02.boulder.ibm.com [9.17.195.168]) by d03relay02.boulder.ibm.com (8.13.8/8.13.8/NCO v8.5) with ESMTP id l8RGsDat467934 for ; Thu, 27 Sep 2007 10:54:13 -0600 Received: from d03av02.boulder.ibm.com (loopback [127.0.0.1]) by d03av02.boulder.ibm.com (8.12.11.20060308/8.13.3) with ESMTP id l8RGsCua007377 for ; Thu, 27 Sep 2007 10:54:13 -0600 Date: Thu, 27 Sep 2007 11:54:12 -0500 To: Arnd Bergmann Subject: Re: [PATCH 5/7] Celleb: Supports VFD on Celleb 2 Message-ID: <20070927165412.GD7970@austin.ibm.com> References: <20070927.165631.-1300533671.kouish@swc.toshiba.co.jp> <200709271107.33696.arnd@arndb.de> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii In-Reply-To: <200709271107.33696.arnd@arndb.de> From: linas@austin.ibm.com (Linas Vepstas) Cc: linuxppc-dev@ozlabs.org, paulus@samba.org List-Id: Linux on PowerPC Developers Mail List List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , On Thu, Sep 27, 2007 at 11:07:33AM +0200, Arnd Bergmann wrote: > On Thursday 27 September 2007, Ishizaki Kou wrote: > > This is a patch to support VFD on Celleb 2. > > VFD is a small LCD to show miscellaneous messages. > > > > Signed-off-by: Kou Ishizaki > > My feeling is that your interface should better be > implemented as a character device, or be integrating into some other > existing message interface, if we can find one. > > * The firmware seems to implement the generic rtas interface for > display-character and set-indicator, but your driver is celleb specific. > I'd be feel more comfortable if we could come up with a driver that also > works on other systems that implement the same rtas calls. Yep, I think I agree. Most pseries systems have a small two-line LCD display. Right now, the code that talks to it is implemented in rtas_progress(). It has this name because its used only for printing out boot progress messages. This is great for debugging hangs, but its not othrewise used. I suppose it would be nice to have a "geeric" interface to the thing, and, after a quickie skim of the code, the celleb display looks similar enogh that this abstraction could be made. --linas