UTICOM(4)

🦋 uticom — the Texas Instruments TUSB3410 USB serial adapter, bestie

okay so real talk: this is a uticom(4) page from the Kernel Interfaces Manual, and it's literally the whole glow-up story of one tiny USB-to-serial chip. let's get into it 💅

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✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

uticom* at uhub?
ucom*  at uicom?

no wait—bestie, it's ucom* at uticom? 🫶 the chip goes on the hub, and the tty layer goes on the chip. that's the whole chain, iconic.

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🌸 DESCRIPTION 🌸

so the uticom driver is the one that handles serial port functionality on devices built around the Texas Instruments TUSB3410 serial-to-USB converter chip. that's the vibe. that's the whole assignment.

the device gets accessed through the ucom(4) driver, which is what makes it behave like a tty(4). so like—your adapter shows up looking like a normal terminal, and everybody acts accordingly. no cap, that's the slay. 👑

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🎀 SEE ALSO 🎀

the whole friend group, fr fr:

• intro(4)
• tty(4)
• ucom(4)
• uhub(4)
• usb(4)

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💜 HISTORY 💜

the uticom device driver first appeared in OpenBSD 4.3. a little vintage moment, we love a comeback story. ⭐

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👑 AUTHORS 👑

the uticom driver was written by these two absolute main characters:

• Dmitry Komissaroff <dxi@mail.ru>
• Hasso Tepper <hasso@estpak.ee>

put some respect on the names 🫡💖

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💀 CAVEATS 💀

okay this is the part where we get serious for a sec, because these are real limits, not aesthetic ones:

• the uticom driver doesn't support devices that have an internal EEPROM with firmware, since such firmware is different to that supplied with OpenBSD. so if your device is one of those—it's not gonna work, and that's not me being dramatic, that's just the truth 😭
• devices with multiple ports will attach all ports, though only the first port can be used for now. so yes, all the ports show up. no, you can't actually use the rest yet. it's giving "you're all invited but only one of you gets a chair" 🙈

fr fr read the caveats before you plug something in and then act surprised. forewarned is forearmed, bestie 💅

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and that's the page!! this cutie came to you from Debian, dated July 16, 2013 — a whole era ago, and yet here we are still reading it together 🦋💖 periodt.