Messages in this thread | | | Subject | Interface change: Now or later? | Date | Tue, 1 Aug 2000 22:32:00 +0200 (MEST) | From | (Rogier Wolff) |
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Hi Linus,
I'm writing the driver for the FireStream 50 and FireStream 155 chips. (*)
The cards that I own have a PHY chip that has a 16-bit interface to the SAR (main) chip.
Current ATM SAR drivers have a routine to write PHY chip registers that has an 8-bit quantity for the value. Simply extending that is not good, as some SARs know the difference between writing 0012 and 12 (the first is a 16-bit write the second an 8-bit write) we therefore need 8, 16, and 32-bit write routines to the phy devices.
If this were done, I'd write my neat litty PHY-driver that would just use the 16-bit writes. And my SAR chip (FS50) would (as one of the first) support both 8-bit and 16-bit writes! Mitch (Current ATM maintainer) and I agree that this is the right way to go about this.
I think it is best to change this interface ASAP (i.e. before 2.4). Mitch thinks it is best to wait for after 2.4 . I think this is wrong. What do you think? (Can you talk some sense into him? :-)
Regards,
Roger.
(*) It's tranmitting and recieving packets (#). It's leaking memory like a firehose on full blast, but it works :-)
(#) I can't "ping" yet, because I seem to be having a hardware failure that causes one direction to "not work".
-- ** R.E.Wolff@BitWizard.nl ** http://www.BitWizard.nl/ ** +31-15-2137555 ** *-- BitWizard writes Linux device drivers for any device you may have! --* * Common sense is the collection of * ****** prejudices acquired by age eighteen. -- Albert Einstein ********
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