On Jan 23, 2009, at 7:02 PM, Michael Buesch wrote: > On Friday 23 January 2009 18:36:37 Francesco Gringoli wrote: >> Hello, >> >> we have been testing the firmware for a week now and it seems stable. >> I personally tested it also on a Linksys WRT54GL and it works both in >> station and in AP modes. I collected the feedbacks that some of you >> sent and it seems that the firmware now runs on these board: >> >> - 4306, 4311, 4318, 4320 > > I don't think it has enough testing, yet. Sure, it seems to be stable on _our_ boards but I can't tell if it shows the same behavior on other hardware revisions. > > >> I was considering the suggestions you all gave me a few days ago and >> other questions related to the possible integration of this firmware >> into the kernel, and I came to these conclusions/questions (please >> forgive me for this long message :-) ) > > I don't think we want to have the firmware in the kernel. > Instead distributions should simply ship the firmware in a package. > That's not our business.
I agree with you, distributions could easily package the firmware and distribute it to users when it will be stable, I was just wondering about. >> - change the name of the initvals for the opensource firmware: this > > Why? > >> [cut] >> initvals have already been uploaded. What can we do? > > Nothing. Why do we need to have different names? Well, I was only considering a question raised by John, we can surely maintain these names. >> - detection of the opensource firmware capabilities: are you really >> sure we cannot use a shm location that the bcm proprietary firmware >> uses for some other purpose? > > Yes, well. You're not intermixing an earlier discussion into this, > where > you didn't indicate opensource capabilities to the kernel. > If you indicate OS capabilities, you can use whatever offset you > want, of course. Excellent. We will modify the firmware accordingly and encode the options. >> - what to do with rts procedure: we can implement this feature easily >> but I'm not sure about the value it can add to people (the majority >> of >> users?) that use the bcm board in station mode. This is different for >> those who run a bcm card in AP mode, but we can clearly discourage >> them to run this firmware in AP mode if not sure about rts usage by >> stations. However, we put this task in the todo list. > > RTS/CTS is not specific to AP mode. It's used on any station in the > BSS. > See IEEE 802.11 specs. Yes, in fact we put this task in the todo list. >> - tx header layout: the opensource firmware is now using the old >> memory layout in the tx header (<351). Do you think switching to 410 >> format is mandatory now or we can concentrate on the other tasks? > > Yes, the old format is deprecated and will be removed soon. Ok, first task in the todo list! >> - I would like to start considering N-phy on the firmware side. I >> have >> a late 2008 MacBook Pro and I'm not sure if beginning this work on >> this platform is a waste of time or not as Apple could have asked >> Broadcom a customized chipset. Should I start or is it better if I >> buy >> a N-phy pci board for my x86 box? > > A little bit of b43-asm work is still needed for this core. > There are a few FIXMEs in the code. Not sure, maybe there's more to > do. > I didn't try that, yet. > Before you start, you'll have to verify whether the assembler works > correctly. > Same for the disassembler. Ok, thanks for the hint. I will check, Cheers, -FG > > > -- > Greetings, Michael. ------- Francesco Gringoli, PhD - Assistant Professor Dept. of Electrical Engineering for Automation University of Brescia via Branze, 38 25123 Brescia ITALY Ph: ++39.030.3715843 FAX: ++39.030.380014 WWW: http://www.ing.unibs.it/~gringoli _______________________________________________ Bcm43xx-dev mailing list [email protected] https://lists.berlios.de/mailman/listinfo/bcm43xx-dev
