[Prism54-devel] Re: Ultra stripped down driver at http://195.66.192.167/linux/isl/isl-20051005.tar.bz2

[Jean-Baptiste Note]

Hi Denis,

Thanks for taking the time to respond.

> I was trying to do something useful with freemac + prism54-usb, but
> cannot find where to start. Not because of some problem with code,
> prism54-usb is probably ok, but it is written to work with softmac
> firmware, not freemac. It means that there are large pieces of code
> which I have to read through and understand only to learn that
> "we don't need this part too". Rinse, repeat. I don't think I
> will be able to manage it.

I understand.

> (BTW, what's your plan - to fully reimplement softmac or to
> add code to prism54-usb which will handle softmac and freemac
> differently?)

Well, the idea behing islsm.ko is to locate there the "intersil softmac
specific stuff". I think I'll do a "freemac.ko" module for the
freemac-specific state machines.

The way it is done now is ugly, as islsm module is needed for low-level
hardware modules to be insmoded. I should have made islsm_pci.ko and
islsm_usb.ko non-dependent on islsm (this way you could've played with
the modules without bothering about the islsm stuff).

I'll try and clear this part up.

> This was not deliberate.
> This is a part which will be now re-assembled too.
>
> README
> ======
> Based on code released under GPL by:
> Copyright (C) 2002 Intersil Americas Inc.
> Copyright (C) 2003 Conexant Americas Inc.
> Copyright (C) 2003-2004 Luis R. Rodriguez <mcgrof at ruslug.rutgers.edu>
> Copyright (C) 2004, 2005 Jean-Baptiste Note
> Copyright (C) 2004 Feyd
> Copyright (C) 2003 Herbert Valerio Riedel <hvr at gnu.org>
> Copyright (C) 2003 Aurelien Alleaume <slts at free.fr>
>
> Did I forget anyone?

I don't think so, and I thank you for this. 

Stricly speaking copyright notice may not be required (you rewrote most
of the code), but i like to think of it as a leftover from the work done
and time spent -- aside from writing the code, which is often only a
small fraction of it (reverse-engeneering is much, much, longer). This
is why, as Sebastien can confirm, I am very keen on maintaining them.

Thanks for taking this into account.

> I omitted author because I don't want to place my name there but can't
> place anybody else either.

Your name there seems perfectly fine to me.

> Yes. We need to submit data to the baseband processor. We need to
> listen to ACK and resend at lower rate if there is not ACK.
> We need to get rx working. There are lots of things to do.
>
> And they should be done for freemac anyway, by adapting prism54-usb
> to work with freemac or by writing "prism54-for-freemac" driver.

OK, i'll try to keep up with you on this, and help you whenever I can,
as i did with Seb on DMA; i'll be much less of a code-writer though.

I can give you directions for the i2c bus workings (but there's only the
eeprom there), for instance, if you wish. I've been keeping this under
the hood for more that two months, with no time to write the
implementation...

JB

-- 
Jean-Baptiste Note
+33 (0)6 83 03 42 38
jean-baptiste.note at wanadoo.fr