magPLIP - SANA II compliant PLIP device driver for AmiTCP/IP, Envoy,
            AS225 and other networking packages.

	revision 38.1


  This file describes how to install the magPLIP driver on your Linux
System. You should already have installed the linplip.device on your
Amiga. 

 You'll need the source for a linux kernel whose version is at least
2.0.26. 
 
 First step : adding plip.c to your kernel
 -----------------------------------------
 
  Support for magPLIP isn't part of the standard linux kernel and will
likely never be, for such a support is of no use whatsoever without
the linplip.device for Amiga. Thus, you'll have to recompile your
kernel, even if you added PLIP support.

  I suppose you already know how to configure and compile your kernel, 
and that you know how to use modules. If not, see the Kernel-HOWTO and
the Module-HOWTO. 

  The file present in the distribution (plip.c) is a modified version
of the plip driver distributed in the kernel revision 2.0.26. It may or
may not work with other version of the kernel. Send a mail to 
if you believe that your kernel (2.0.27 or later) is not compatible any 
longer with plip.c. 

  What you have to do : 
	
	 copy plip.c to /usr/src/linux/drivers/net/plip.c
		(make a copy of your old plip.c if you want to use it
		 later. See Using the original PLIP driver at the end
		 of this file.) 

 Second step : compiling the kernel and setting up your system
 -------------------------------------------------------------

  Now, the procedure is exactly the same as the one described
  in the PLIP mini-HOWTO. See this file and follow its instructions. I
  am not going to repeat here these instruction, as I couldn't
  do any better than the author of the HOWTO.  
  
  Remember that you HAVE to recompile your kernel or at least
  the plip driver to use this version of the driver.

  If you get error messages while compiling the plip.c file, 
  and that your kernel version is at least 2.0.26, please send
  me a mail containing the exact version of your kernel and
  the error messages you got from gcc. <Stephane.Zermatten@earthling.net>



 Using both the original PLIP driver and the modified magPLIP driver
 -------------------------------------------------------------------

  You'll have to compile both the original driver and the modified
version as modules to do this. In order to do that, 
	1. configure your kernel Makefiles for including PLIP support 
           as a module.
	2. leave or replace the original version of plip.c in 
	   driver/net/plip.c 
	3. run "make modules" 
	4. copy the module modules/plip.o wherever you want
	   (in lib/modules or lib/modules/2.0.26/net or whatever) 
 	5. place my version of plip.c in driver/net/plip.c
	6. run "make modules" again
	7. copy the module modules/plip.o under the name magplip.o
	   in the same directory as the original plip.o


  Now, you've got two different modules, plip.o, which contains the
driver to connect to another Linux system, and magplip.o, which contains
the driver you should use to connect to an Amiga. 

  If you're not going to connect to both an Amiga and another Linux system
at the same time, you can load the module you want to use when you
want. Note that kerneld won't be able to guess which module you want; you
have to do it manually, typing "insmod plip.o" or "insmod magplip.o", or 
write a script. 

  If you have several parallel ports and want to connect to a PC running
Linux and an Amiga at the same time, you can run into a bit of a trouble...
The best way to do it would be to write a version that supports both
protocols. I intend to write it, when I have the time... Tell me if you
need it. 

  There is a much cleaner way to do all this, but you'll have to modify the 
Makefile and the configuration script of the kernel, as well as the 
source code. That's too much for me. I'll leave that to kernel hackers.
If you do it, please send me a description of the procedure you've
used, so that I can include it in a future release.  

 
 See also 
 --------

	the PLIP mini-HOWTO
	Kernel-HOWTO
	Module-HOWTO
	the magPLIP documentation (magPLIP.guide on Amiga)


					Stephane Zermatten
					Stephane.Zermatten@earthling.net