I'd like to start merging this into the "firmware" directory of the mainline kernel. On Friday 09 January 2009 11:29:22 Michael Buesch wrote: > > ---------- Forwarded Message ---------- > > Subject: opensource firmware > Date: Friday 09 January 2009 > From: Francesco Gringoli <francesco.gringoli@xxxxxxxxxxxx> > To: bcm43xx-dev@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx > > Hello folks, > > we have been involved in the past few months in testing modifications > to the standard 802.11 MAC for research purposes. During this time we > did some tests with Broadcom 802.11b/g boards and we wrote down a > simple 802.11 compliant firmware that we used as a starting point for > the modified MAC algorithms. > > Although the base firmware is not fully 802.11 compliant, e.g., it > does not support RTS/CTS procedure or QoS, we believe that someone > could be interested in testing it. The firmware does not require the > kernel to be modified and it uses the same shared memory layout and > global registers usage of the original stuff from broadcom to ease > loading by the b43 driver (and ease our writing...). We wrote it to > make the b43 driver recognize it as Broadcom version 5 firmware: it > still uses the original initval files of that version of the > Broadcom's firmware, we do not include them as usual users have to > extract these files following the b43 installation instructions. > > Lorenzo and I tested this firmware only on 4306 and 4318 hardware (pci > and minipci, pc-card based architectures seem to have problems), and > we did simple tests on the integrated board of a Linksys WRT54GL, so > we are quite sure it runs on 4306, 4318 and 4320 cards. We did all the > works on kernel 2.6.27-rc5-wl. > > The firmware along with the instructions to build it from the assembly > code using the tools developed by the b43 community can be found here > > http://www.ing.unibs.it/openfwwf > > In the firmware website you can find more information about the fw > algorithm, its interaction with Broadcom hardware and other > information that we discovered as we were writing it. > > We would like to underline that this work would have not been possible > without the instruments already developed by the b43 community > (assembler/disassembler), hardware specifications (sipsolution's > website), the opensource test firmware written by Michael Buesch and > useful talks with those guys (b43 developers), which we deeply > acknowledge. As we used several definition files written by Michael > for its firmware and we have prepared a source tar file that includes > them, we kindly ask Michael if this could be a problem. > > Finally we stress that this is a TEST firmware and some stuff needs to > be fixed (e.g. RTS/CTS and QoS), we have been using it as a starting > point to implement other MAC algorithms for research purposes: if > someone is interested in this kind of work and would like to share > ideas also on research topics, please let us know. > > Cheers, > Francesco Gringoli > Lorenzo Nava > _______________________________________________ > Bcm43xx-dev mailing list > Bcm43xx-dev@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx > https://lists.berlios.de/mailman/listinfo/bcm43xx-dev > > > ------------------------------------------------------- > -- Greetings, Michael. -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-wireless" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
