NOTE: This driver has not been ported from
4.4BSD yet.
The
np device provides access to an Interlan Np100 Ethernet interface for control functions.
This interface is unusual in that it requires loading firmware into the controller before it may be used as a network link-level interface. This is accomplished by opening a character special device, and writing data to it. It is also possible to do post-mortem debugging of firmware failures by reading the local memory of the device.
Multiple control processes are allowed by opening separate minor devices; secondary interfaces are specified by shifting the interface number by 4 bits.
The device also responds to commands passed through the driver by the following
ioctl(2)s:
NPRESET
kills off all active network processes.
NPSTART
begins execution of the board at the specified address (usually 0x400).
NPNETBOOT
downloads the image from a server on the network. [Contact MICOM-INTERLAN for details.]