Serial Port Bug?

[Lamar Owen]

On Wednesday 28 November 2007, Karl Larsen wrote:
> Lamar Owen wrote:
> > Is the serial port enabled in the BIOS?

>     I have looked and found nothing in the many pages of BIOS things but
> I could of missed it.

What model Biostar MB is this?  All their manuals are online; older ones 
especially included screenshots of the setup screens.  Look for, in 
the 'integrated peripherals' setup section the 'COM1' and 'COM2' settings 
(the names might be different; I don't have a Biostar board in front of me 
(got one at home, though, that I might put on the breadboard and check out)).

>     This is from #setserial -a /dev/ttyS0:
>
> [root at k5di ~]# setserial /dev/ttyS0 -a
> /dev/ttyS0, Line 0, UART: unknown, Port: 0x03f8, IRQ: 4
>         Baud_base: 115200, close_delay: 50, divisor: 0
>         closing_wait: 3000
>         Flags: spd_normal skip_test auto_irq

> This I think is good.

UART is unknown; no, this is bad.  If the kernel can't detect the type of UART 
(it will likely be 16550A or similar for virtually all modern MB's) then it 
can't use the port.

On my own laptop, which does not have ANY serial ports:
[root at localhost ~]# setserial /dev/ttyS0 -a
/dev/ttyS0, Line 0, UART: unknown, Port: 0x03f8, IRQ: 4
        Baud_base: 115200, close_delay: 50, divisor: 0
        closing_wait: 3000
        Flags: spd_normal skip_test auto_irq

[root at localhost ~]#  

So setserial doesn't help troubleshoot this.

On the box with one serial port:
[root at itadmin ~]# setserial /dev/ttyS0 -a
/dev/ttyS0, Line 0, UART: 16550A, Port: 0x03f8, IRQ: 4
        Baud_base: 115200, close_delay: 50, divisor: 0
        closing_wait: 3000
        Flags: spd_normal skip_test

[root at itadmin ~]#             

UART is a 16550A, and works.
-- 
Lamar Owen
Chief Information Officer
Pisgah Astronomical Research Institute
1 PARI Drive
Rosman, NC  28772
(828)862-5554
www.pari.edu