Messages in this thread |  | | Date | Tue, 4 Sep 2001 15:42:21 +0200 | From | Erik Mouw <> | Subject | Re: Should I use Linux to develop driver for specialized ISA card? |
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On Tue, Sep 04, 2001 at 02:57:10PM +0200, Rastislav Stanik wrote: > I'm developing specialized plotter. > The moving parts of the plotter are controlled by ISA card that generates > (and responds to) interrupts on each movement or printing event. > The interrupts can be generated quite fast; up to frequency of 4kHz.
I just made a driver for a couple of serial A/Ds that runs at 2kHz on a StrongARM platform. The system doesn't have any problems to keep up with that frequency, so I think 4kHz would still be OK.
> I need to write a driver for that. > The 1st prototype is developed in MS-DOS,but I hit problem with memory. > The driver needs to use (and transfer) quite big chunks of memory. > 1MB is not enough. > > In NT you don't develop drivers so easily. It is actually a pain. > Therefore I'm considering Linux. The machine would be probably > dedicated and, may be later, embeded in the plotter. > Problems: > - It is unlikely that my driver would ever make it to main-stream > kernel source.
That's no problem, most of the embedded drivers never do.
> - I'm just a C/C++ programmer, I have just rough idea what does it > mean to 'develop a driver in Linux'. I'm pretty familiar with Linux > as sys-admin though.
Forget about C++ for kernel programming, it simply doesn't work (see the lkml FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/ ). A nice starting point for kernel programming is http://www.kernelnewbies.org/ together with its IRC channel #kernelnewbies. Also get a copy of the book "Linux device drivers (2nd edition)", there is a link in the books section on the kernelnewbies website.
> All I need is: to have piece of code executed on some interrupt, > read/write IO ports of the card and be able to transfer big pieces > of memory to the card. > > What do you think? Is Linux the ideal platform for me?
I don't know if Linux is the *ideal* platform, but driving a plotter could certainly be done in Linux.
Erik
-- J.A.K. (Erik) Mouw, Information and Communication Theory Group, Department of Electrical Engineering, Faculty of Information Technology and Systems, Delft University of Technology, PO BOX 5031, 2600 GA Delft, The Netherlands Phone: +31-15-2783635 Fax: +31-15-2781843 Email: J.A.K.Mouw@its.tudelft.nl WWW: http://www-ict.its.tudelft.nl/~erik/ - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
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