Re: [PATCHSET] libata: PATA driver for Celleb

[linas@austin.ibm.com (Linas Vepstas)]

On Thu, Feb 15, 2007 at 07:09:25PM +0100, Arnd Bergmann wrote:
> On Thursday 15 February 2007 18:14, Linas Vepstas wrote:
> > > Linas has done a pretty good job on improving the driver in the last half
> > > year or so and he also has access to all the necessary hardware so I think
> > > he would be the right person for the job.
> > 
> > It seems I've been nominated twice. Since I'm expecting future activity
> > to drop to zero, how hard can this be? :-)
> 
> I fear that the hardest part is yet to come, 

Well, then, its a good thing I put a smiley face at the end of the
sentence, eh?

> when we integrate the
> driver for the the PS3 (currently called gelic_net) into spidernet.
> The trouble is that the hardware is sufficiently similar to share
> all the high-level mechanisms like the DMA data structures and
> descriptor chains, but the low-level mechanisms are hidden in the
> hypervisor on the PS3. Someone will have to invest a significant
> amount of time coordinating this so we don't break celleb and qs20
> in the process.

Since I've got the driver more or less memorized, I don't expect this
to be an intellectual challenge. Which sometimes has the side effect
of my getting bored, and dropping things on the floor.

> I also think that you'd do a good job doing this, but it may be
> more that what you are willing to do without official funding of the
> time you spend on it. 

(Ardnt knows that my spidernet work is "moonlighting", off-the-books 
work.)  I'll ask my employer.

> Of course the actual amount of work will
> depend a lot on the quality of the spidernet patches coming from
> Sony to the spidernet maintainer.

I guess I'll have to ask my employer for a ps3 that I can do 
some "research" on.

--linas