Subject: re: Device Properties: The Next Generation To: Nathan
J. Williams <nathanw@MIT.EDU> From: matthew green <> List: tech-
kern Date: 02/22/2001 12:15:36 my feelings on property
inheritant stands pretty close to eeh's:  don't restrict the way
properties can be used to try to avoid programmer lossage. with
these restrictions, they become much less useful.     > A
cartain Solaris SCSI controller device driver wanted to know the
> chip's clock frequency.  There were several versions of this
chip at    > different clockrates, and the faster ones were
capable of faster    > transfers.  So if it was running on a
fast chip, the driver would    > enable the higher speed
transfers.  To make this determination, it    > queried the
`frequency' property.  However, some of the older    > devices
did not have a `frequency' property in the FCode for that    >
node.  Since the request had specified PROP_INHERIT, it would
match    > the `frequency' for the bus on some machines, which
was not the    > right value.  This