> Most hardware + firmware combinations provide insufficient detail > to know what pins are used for what, reserved for what, or wired > to an auto-destruct.
But that's by design. GPIO is simply an interface to a digital I/O pin on the CPU. Everything after that is up to the end-user. Especially so since they are the ones controlling what is connected to those pins. I bit-bang the RPI all the time, and no two of them ever uses the available pins in the same way. Because I'm prototyping, so this changes all the time. That makes it *my* responsibility to know WTF I am doing (including which pins to stay away from on that specific device). As it should be. Bottom line is if you are banging on low-level hardware interfaces like this, you better know what your hardware is doing. At this level, just like with device drivers, you have all the tools at your disposal to destroy everything in sight. This is why gpio device interfaces require (or at least should require) root perms to access in any way. Of course, you're much more likely to destroy your device (or a good portion of those ports, at least) by plugging a 5V peripheral into a 3V port. No OS assistance required :-P [demime 1.01d removed an attachment of type application/pgp-signature which had a name of signature.asc]
