This HOWTO emphasizes the efforts of just one particular way of accessing the VMEbus from a Linux system; Our way requires the Tundra Universe PCI/VME bridge device which will not work with many VME processor boards. Fortunately, there are several other efforts out there in various stages of developement which provide the VME system integrator with options.
Since it is our desire to make this HOWTO reflect the efforts of the entire community of VME folks, we will be adding coverage of the other projects in future versions of this document. For the moment, we are simply going to list the other efforts in this section. Please refer to the latest documentaion at The VMELinux Project for up to date information.
There has been some confusion about the major device number to assign VME bus devices. Originally, the VMELinux Universe driver used 70. This quickly came into conflict with the "SpellCaster Protocol" as the number became assigned by the Linux folks. I requested and received a device number of 221 for VME devices. In a perfect world, all Linux VME design efforts would have a common interface to their driver through this device. I doubt we will ever see unity on this particular aspect, however, I think we can all at least agree to use this number for our devices.
Refer to the kernel.org web site for more details on this and every other assigned device major number.