From: Holger Schurig <hs4233@mail.mn-solutions.de>
To: linux-wireless@vger.kernel.org, marvell8385-devel@linuxtogo.org,
frankh@marvell.com, rchokshi@marvell.com
Subject: How to start with a Marvell driver (non-USB, non-OLPC)
Date: Fri, 9 Feb 2007 08:58:26 +0100 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <200702090858.26294.hs4233@mail.mn-solutions.de> (raw)
Hi all !
This mail is an attempt to get some feedback about the way we
should go :-) "We" are several people interested in 802.11bg
cards in Compact-Flash format with an Marvell 8385 (AFAIK) chip.
See the list of people at
http://projects.linuxtogo.org/projects/marvell8385/ A driver
for this cards would be quite nice for PDAs and other embedded
Linux systems.
Two months ago I sent an e-mail to Marvell for support, or at
least to put me in contact with the product manager. There was
no response. Maybe they don't care for sales.
However, Marvell released a GPL driver for the OLPC project,
which is now in Linux mainline. This driver is for a different
chip (8388 AFAIK), a different firmware (with Mesh capability)
and a different host interface (USB). During the last month the
libertas driver got rid of more and more code that applied to
non-8388, non-USB, non-mesh-firmware versions of the Libertas
chip set family. Those cleanups made the in-kernel libertas
driver more and more unusable for the cards that I have in mind.
They did not only clean up, they also added their specific stuff
for their mesh solution.
I think the biggest problem here is the firmware. The OLPC people
have a special firmware for their USB dongle, which is not used
in other chips, so a driver that has been heavily adapted to
this firmware isn't easy to mangle to a different firmware.
Fortunately, because of the involvement of Marvell into the OLPC
project, they posted in a public mailing list reference
documenentation about their firmware ! :-)
So, what I (and several other people, see want to take the OLPC
driver, get rid of the USB stuff, add in back stuff that is
needed for CF-Card, add mangle and treat this until we get
something that is working.
Now, linux-2.6.20 still has Softmac. Some projects, like the
bcm43xx, are very lively in the softwac area. d80211 is supposed
to come into the kernel since months. I guess it's an endless
task? Will it ever arive? What 80211 version should we use if
our aim is inclusion in the stock kernel? We don't plan, like
so many other project, divide our working time into a year-long
maintainance of two 80211 versions.
next reply other threads:[~2007-02-09 8:33 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 6+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2007-02-09 7:58 Holger Schurig [this message]
2007-02-09 12:35 ` How to start with a Marvell driver (non-USB, non-OLPC) John W. Linville
2007-02-09 12:49 ` Dan Williams
2007-02-09 14:24 ` Holger Schurig
2007-02-09 15:49 ` Dan Williams
2007-02-15 8:40 ` Holger Schurig
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