Messages in this thread | | | Date | Sat, 10 Apr 1999 22:09:30 -0400 (EDT) | From | Bradley M Keryan <> | Subject | Re: Please!! Help me to help us to use WinModems in Linux |
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On Thu, 8 Apr 1999, Richard Reynolds wrote:
> A brief Introduction > I am a Windoze user, programmer, system administrator. compitent in C/C++, > Delphi, Visual Basic and more. I also am a little more than a newbe to linux > with several computers running Windows version x and Linux mostlly using > Lucent Viking modems. > > I have been trying to make these work in linux and have been reading all of > the topics from several mailing lists with very little help until I found > someone saying that this modem was all software driven (duh I knew that) and > that the drivers were somekind of seceret (did not know that can't even see > how, sence i found them?) and that they were not available. Well as of now i > have the technology (drivers source code) to make the drivers required to
Okay, here is the million dollar question:
Where and how did you get the driver source code?
If you obtained it through legal means, tell everyone else how you did so, so they can take a look at it too. Post a URL or something.
If the answer something like is "my brother works for Lucent so I asked him to get it for me" or "I got it off a warez group" then I'm not interested and I doubt anyone else on this list is, either.
If it's a screwup by one of the modem manufacturers--say, a copy of the driver was release with full debugging symbols (including source) built into the executables--then you should probably ask them about making a derived work.
> run my modem. I can recreate the drivers for windozs make new ones for DOS > (also not "supported" by the vendor) but i have no ability to program in > Linux and don't even know where to start. The drivers would need to do 3 > major things
Even if you can write a Linux version, can you legally release it as open source? Can you even release a binary version?
AFAIK (and this is just speculation, mind you), there are three non-technical problems that you might face:
1. Would you be breaking the terms of the modem driver license? Is there any sort of agreement between you and the owner of the code that you have, such as a non-disclosure agreement, that would prevent you from releasing your work?
2. Are there any patents that your driver would infringe upon?
3. What about the ITU? Last time I checked, they were charging decent-sized amounts of money (about $1000 per year per person) for their telecom specifications. How much of the ITU specs does the driver reveal, and is that a problem?
> > 1. initialize the device maybee at a very early stage the ports are turned > off until initialize is complete and successful. > 2. process every 32bit word before being sent to the modem. > 3. process every 32bit word after being recieved by the modem. > > I think this might be slightly off topic but am not sure I know that i have > seen this and simalar topics on this and a few other mailing lists. sorry > for any inconvience.please feel free to respond even if you don't know how > to do this as I learn from every comment > Thank you > Richard.Reynolds@usa.net
There are a lot of good sources for information on writing Linux device drivers. Some include The Linux Kernel Hackers' Guide (http://khg.redhat.com/HyperNews/get/khg.html), The Linux Kernel Module Programming Guide (http://www.redhat.com/docs/LDP/LDP/lkmpg/mpg.html), _Linux_Device_Drivers_ by Alessandro Rubini, another book called _Linux_Kernel_Internals_ (I forget the author's name), and of course (the most important one) the kernel source itself. Plus there are probably many more.
If you write an open-source DOS winmodem driver, then someone else will probably port it to Linux for you... the question is, could they (and you) get sued for doing it?
Brad
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