Contents

General Information

The SuperIO module is included in the Astro chipset and emulates a HP9000 PCI board with PC style peripherals:

• parallel port
• 2 serial ports
• dual-channel IDE controller
• floppy disk controller
• USB controller
• timer
• PIC interrupt controller

 The current version of Charon-HPA supports only a subset of these devices.

Currently supported are (depending on support by the emulated model and guest operating system)

• two serial ports
• one parallel port

Loading the SuperIO Module

Before any devices of the module can be configured and used, the module must be loaded in the emulator configuration file.

Use the following syntax to load this module:

load SUPERIO sio <bus-number> <slot-number>

Example:

load SUPERIO sio 0 6

After booting the guest HP-UX system, this will result in an ioscan output similar to the following:

ba          1  0/0/6/1      superio   CLAIMED     BUS_NEXUS    PCI Core I/O Adapter
tty         1  0/0/6/1/1    asio0     CLAIMED     INTERFACE    Built-in RS-232C
tty         2  0/0/6/1/2    asio0     CLAIMED     INTERFACE    Built-in RS-232C
ext_bus     4  0/0/6/1/3    SCentIf   CLAIMED     INTERFACE    Built-in Parallel Interface
unknown    -1  0/0/6/1/4              UNCLAIMED   UNKNOWN      Built-in Floppy Drive

Please note:

• Only one SuperIO module can be loaded in the configuration.
• The slot number in the load command is not the same as the slot numbers used to indicate free PCI IO expansion slots where, for example, an additional SCSI adapter can be loaded. Instead, it indicates the position of the module on the bus.
• The usable bus numbers and slot numbers depend on the emulated model and the already loaded devices.
• Important: take care to always use a slot number higher than the one where the console line has been loaded. Otherwise, HP-UX will mistakenly configure the SuperIO serial line as the system console and the system boot will fail.

Configuring the Devices

Serial Lines

Please see chapter Serial Line Emulation Notes for more information.

 SuperIO serial lines cannot be used as the system console.

Parallel Port

If the Linux guest system has a parallel port with a device file named /dev/parport0 (can also be linked to a USB parallel port), the emulator will connect to this parallel port automatically without additional information.

However, it may be necessary to install the required kernel drivers in HP-UX and rebuild the kernel to activate the interface.

If the ioscan command shows the parallel port as UNCLAIMED, perform the following steps:

1. Use the kcmodule command to verify the status of the required drivers:
   # kcmodule |grep CentIf
CentIf static explicit
SCentIf static explicit


2. If the status is unused, load the modules into the kernel using the commands:
   # kcmodule CentIf=best
# kcmodule SCentIf=best


3. You will be informed that this change can only become active after the next reboot. If you confirm, the kernel will be modified and you can reboot the system.

Once the ioscan command shows that the parallel port as CLAIMED by the correct driver, you can, for example, use SAM to configure a printer on the parallel port
(Printers and Plotters > LP Spooler > Printers and Plotters > Action > Add Local Printer > Add Parallel Printer).