Re: Serial port blues

["H. Peter Anvin" <hpa@zytor.com>]

Joe Barr wrote:
> I'm forwarding this post by the author of a great little program for
> digital amateur radio on Linux, because I'm curious whether or not the
> problem he is seeing can be resolved outside the kernel.
> 
> All comments welcome on/off list.
>
> Thanks,
> Joe Barr
> K1GPL

[...]

> 
> I've spent the last day staring at the oscilloscope and pins RTS and DTR 
> on the serial output for 4 different computers running 4 different 
> versions of Linux.  Also have exhausted the search on the internet for 
> information regarding both the latency and jitter associated with ioctl 
> calls to the serial driver (both ttyS and ttyUSB).  I'm sure it is out 
> there somewhere, I just cannot find it.
> 
> I am now convinced that the current serial port drivers available to us 
> on the Linux platform WILL NOT support CW and/or RTTY that is software 
> generated in a satisfactory manner.
> 
> To test the latency and jitter of the ioctl calls to set or clear RTS 
> and / or DTR I built a basic square wave generator with microsecond 
> timing precision.  The timing could be derived either from the select 
> system call or by controlled i/o to the sound card.  Both provide very 
> precise timing of the program loop.  Each time through the loop either 
> the RTS/DTR was set or cleared.  The timing jitter for each 1/2 cycle 
> was from 0 to +4 msec.  This varied between systems as each had 
> different cpu clock rates.  The jitter is caused by the asynchronous 
> response of the kernel to the request to control the port.  ioctl 
> requests apparantly do not have a very high priority for the kernel.  
> They are probably just serviced by a first-in first-out interrupt 
> service request loop.  That type of jitter is tolerable up to about 20 
> wpm CW.  It totally wipes out the ability to generate an FSK signal on 
> the DTR or RTS pin.

Okay, here he's using bit-banging of the DTR and RTS pins to generate a 
fairly high precision output wave.  This is not really the

> Direct access to the serial port(s) is a kernel perogative in Linux.  
> Only kernel level drivers are allowed such port access.

So write a kernel driver.  It's not like we're locking anybody out. 
There is certainly enough Amateur Radio/Linux crossover that a kernel 
enhancement to support Amateur Radio is going to get frowned upon.

> So ... bottom line is that all of my attempts over the past couple of 
> months to provide CW and / or FSK output signal have been to fraught 
> with pitfalls.  The CW seems OK for slow speed keying, but the FSK seems 
> impossible to achieve.
> 
> The FSK using the UART is also limited by the Linux operating system and 
> the current drivers.  That limitation excludes the use of 45 or 56 baud 
> BAUDOT.

That is true at the moment (due to unfortunate design choices made early 
on), but this is already in the process of being changed:

http://lkml.org/lkml/2006/10/18/280

> Until such time as new information becomes available I am going to 
> comment out all references to CW and / or FSK via RTS/DTR.  I also 
> question how useful the FSK on TxD (UART derived) might be to most users 
> since the 45.45 baudrate is not available in the serial port driver.  
> That function will also be commented out.
> 
> All this should not really come as a surprise since Linux is not a 
> real-time operating system. By the way, I did try the tests with the 
> test program running with nice -20.  Not much difference.

See again how he should be using real-time priority rather than nice -20.

> Sorry folks, but we win some and lose some.
> 
> 73, Dave, W1HKJ

	-hpa