On Wed, 2009-07-01 at 17:16 +0100, Karl Relton wrote: > On Tue, 2009-06-30 at 14:58 -0700, Luis R. Rodriguez wrote: > > On Tue, Jun 30, 2009 at 2:09 PM, Karl > > Relton<karllinuxtest.relton@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > > On Tue, 2009-06-30 at 12:17 -0700, Luis R. Rodriguez wrote: > > >> On Tue, Jun 30, 2009 at 12:05 PM, Karl > > >> Relton<karllinuxtest.relton@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > >> > Signed-Off-By: Karl Relton > > >> > Signed-Off-By: Mark S. Mathews > > >> > > >> The commit log is empty. Where is this driver? Is it in staging at > > >> least? If so does this get users of the driver a usable firmware? What > > >> is the future of the driver BTW? > > >> > > > > > > Oops - put text in wrong part of patch documentation. I can move this up > > > to the 'commit log' part. > > > > > > The driver is under 'staging' - maintained by Greg Koah-Hartman > > > > > > The firmware blob in 'srec' format for prism 2/3 usb adaptors. > > > The driver will read the srec file using a standard request_firmware() > > > call, and will convert it into the appropriate binary format and upload to > > > the adaptor. Note the processing is left to the driver (rather than > > > pre-compiling) because the driver needs to insert runtime data obtained from > > > the adaptor into the blob. The appropriate insertion locations are conveyed > > > by the srec format. > > > > Why all the srec->binary conversion? Doesn't this waste space on > > people's firmware directories? > > > Yes, technically it does. The srec file is ~185KB, a binary image would > be ~64KB. > > The reason it was left is that the driver has to do some runtime > plugging of data into the image, so pre-compilation would have meant > inventing both a compiler tool and an intermediate format for the driver > to read and process. Putting all the srec processing in the driver was > more expedient (just meant porting existing userspace code into driver > space). The kernel has support for a binary form of srec files (well, of ihex files, which are fairly much the same thing). See include/linux/ihex.h and firmware/ihex2fw.c. -- David Woodhouse Open Source Technology Centre David.Woodhouse@xxxxxxxxx Intel Corporation -- 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
