Hi On Monday 08 February 2010 17:49:29 Markus Rechberger wrote: > To write a driver with good quality it takes alot more than just 50 > hours, it took us > around 1 year to have a certain quality now. > We now support Linux, FreeBSD and MacOSX with the same driver as well as > embedded ARM devices with bugged compilers. > Just having it work will result in alot signal problems with some > cable providers. > The Micronas drivers are probably the most complex drivers this entire > project has ever > seen. Thank you for your quick reply. Well, that sounds pretty bad indeed. On the other hand, my goal is not to write a perfect driver, but start writing and see where that leads me. I might very well give up after a few unsuccessful attempts. > > My question is, did the Micronas legal department intervene because the > > linux driver built on top of their reference implementation and they > > weren't willing to gpl that, or did they also oppose on using the > > data-sheets? If it was only the reference driver, wouldn't it be > > whorthwhile trying to again get the data sheets and build a driver based > > solely on these? I couldn't find any post that would clarify this. > > it's an official statement, that they do not want to have their driver > opensourced. Yes, I understood that. The question was, does that also apply to writing a driver based only on the data sheets, without ever even looking at their reference driver code? > > However, I'm in no way an expert in v4l driver writing, so I > > don't know where this will lead to or if I'm going to brick the device on > > the very first occasion ;-) (btw: how easy is that, generally?) > > it's the most difficult device. Ah, let me clarify that. I wasn't asking how easy it is to write a driver, but actually quite the opposite: how easy is it to damage the typical dvb-t tuner by (accidentally) writing garbage to some registers? > In case you're looking for something that works with Linux better > return it asap, or sell it Thanks. I did consider that. But I have already accepted that the device isn't working and isn't going to work in the not so remote future. I was wondering if I could at least try to establish some communication with the device. Even if that won't result in a working driver, I might learn something. Best case: other people pick up some work and we get a working driver, maybe in 5 or 10 years ;-) Markus (M) -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-media" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
