Date: Wed, 24 Jan 2001 14:51:38 -0800 From: David Greenman <dg@root.com> To: Dennis <dennis@etinc.com> Cc: hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: if_fxp driver info Message-ID: <200101242251.OAA24180@implode.root.com> In-Reply-To: Your message of "Wed, 24 Jan 2001 17:08:16 EST." <5.0.0.25.0.20010124170245.03bf6140@mail.etinc.com>
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
>> > I'll look into the Linux driver, however, and see if it has anything >> > useful in it. Historically the Linux Pro/100+ driver has totally sucked and >> > was chalk-full of magic numbers being anded and ored. >> >>That's "chock full", and you're confusing the Becker driver (bad) with >>the Intel-supplied driver (slightly less bad). > > >The intel driver seems to cover all the bases and has some nice glue >routines for determining the part and features available. > >I havent tested it under load, but I wonder if intel would consider >supporting it if someone ported it over to freebsd? they have drivers for >just about every other major OS except BSD. it would be nice if the driver >was updated BEFORE cards and MBs that dont work started showing up on the >loading dock. Every time I get a shipment we have to hold our breath until >we try one out. "drivers for every major OS"? They have drivers for Windows, Window/NT, and Linux. Of those Linux is the closest to FreeBSD, but that's like saying that a penguin is similar to a human because they are both mammals. After looking at the driver source, it's my opinion that porting it to FreeBSD would be a major undertaking and it would likely be easier to just rewrite it from scratch. In total it is more than 14,000 lines of code - much of which is highly specific to the Linux internals. The current FreeBSD driver, by comparison, is about 2600 lines of code and a whole lot easier to read and maintain. I do believe that there are some useful tidbits to be gotten out of the Intel/Linux driver, but that's about it. -DG David Greenman Co-founder, The FreeBSD Project - http://www.freebsd.org President, TeraSolutions, Inc. - http://www.terasolutions.com Pave the road of life with opportunities. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?200101242251.OAA24180>