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SubjectRe: Ethernet driver for NatSemi dp83815
"Adam J. Richter" wrote:

> John, Ian,
>
> From a conversation that I had today, I now I believe that we all
> are using drivers that originated with TeamF1's work for National
> Semiconductor (today is the first time I had heard of them). I guess
> Don's driver was a separate effort. Anyhow, let's try to clean up the
> better of these two drivers (or merge things as appropriate) and get
> a driver into 2.4.0-testX and perhaps 2.2.x as well.

Yeah, my driver is the same one John sent. I ported my copy to 2.4 but other
than that a quick diff shows that they are pretty much the same.


> I made a first pass at porting Donald's natsemi.c driver to
> 2.4.0-test5, with its simpler PCI-specific mechanisms, but I don't have
> it working yet. I have also cleaned up the TeamF1-derived dp83815.c
> driver from Wyse a little more. I would be interested in getting
> these other related dp83815.c drivers to see if they're better of have
> changes that should be merged in, unless somebody else wants to.
> For example, I am told that the people at Wyse had to extend the reset
> code, because it had relied on the BIOS to have done some things that were
> not necessarily guaranteed to get done (I don't know the details). So,
> it is important that this support be integrated into the version that
> goes into the kernel.

I'm not sure what I can and can't disclose but we *have* experienced hardware
problem that is BIOS related. Some guys at NSC fixed it by changing our BIOS and
supposedly it was simple but they didn't tell us what it was. My rev of the
dp83815.c code definitely does not fix it. I'll dig out my original dp83815.c
and my hacked up 2.4 dp83815.c and I can send it to somebody if they want to
decide which driver is better. I know next to nothing about writing ethernet
drivers so I can help but I'm not qualified to make decisions.. I want to help
in any way that I can though.


> Side note:
>
> I am still investigating the origins of the dp83815.c driver,
> although the question may be academic, since the 2.4.0-test5 driver
> that I had already posted added author credits and GPL for Don
> Becker and Paul Gortmaker becuase I used ne2k-pci.c code to update
> the driver. If somebody did plaguize the code I suspect that someone
> unfamiliar with free software mores thought that their employer had
> bought all the rights or executed the appropriate contracts to be able
> to remove the copyright notices, which is more the norm in the
> proprietary world. Anyhow, we definitely should correct the
> problem if there is one. Don, if you could look at the code that
> I sent you last week and tell me if you think it is a derivative
> work of yours, I would appreciate it.

I don't know who exactly TeamF1 is but my NSC sales rep says that when they
produced the MacPhyter chipset (the 83815) they hired some guys out of Seattle to
cons up an ethernet driver because a number of people building web pads and other
embedded products with Linux wanted one. As far as I can tell NSC isn't working
with TeamF1 anymore, it was a quick fix to make a sale or two and when I last
asked they were trying to put together a Linux support team so they could support
the driver in-house. I don't think they are terribly motivated to act on it,
it's sales people who keep giving me that line.

Ian Nelson



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