From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Fri Mar 18 00:46:55 2011 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id CAEBC106566B for ; Fri, 18 Mar 2011 00:46:55 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from perrin@apotheon.com) Received: from oproxy1-pub.bluehost.com (oproxy1-pub.bluehost.com [66.147.249.253]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with SMTP id 9997C8FC08 for ; Fri, 18 Mar 2011 00:46:55 +0000 (UTC) Received: (qmail 22503 invoked by uid 0); 18 Mar 2011 00:46:55 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO box543.bluehost.com) (74.220.219.143) by oproxy1.bluehost.com.bluehost.com with SMTP; 18 Mar 2011 00:46:55 -0000 DomainKey-Signature: a=rsa-sha1; q=dns; c=nofws; s=default; d=apotheon.com; h=Date:From:To:Subject:Message-ID:Mail-Followup-To:References:Mime-Version:Content-Type:Content-Disposition:In-Reply-To:User-Agent:X-Identified-User; b=H4SSi+chKiKeUBRuxadCE6PlfPnEeRYWC8sbKvfOr6mTRht3yM4l9H8JfTwClR0T9FoxEClPEzFU14+A+Gl24dtKLzty74vTo3DlaxilGMgsX1BwAAUWHjjxTsQeu/CK; Received: from c-24-8-180-234.hsd1.co.comcast.net ([24.8.180.234] helo=kukaburra.hydra) by box543.bluehost.com with esmtpsa (TLSv1:AES256-SHA:256) (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1Q0Nq9-0005aw-RJ for freebsd-questions@freebsd.org; Thu, 17 Mar 2011 18:46:54 -0600 Received: by kukaburra.hydra (sSMTP sendmail emulation); Thu, 17 Mar 2011 18:35:12 -0600 Date: Thu, 17 Mar 2011 18:35:12 -0600 From: Chad Perrin To: FreeBSD Message-ID: <20110318003512.GA16444@guilt.hydra> Mail-Followup-To: FreeBSD References: <20110317144200.GA28942@takino.org> <20110317194852.GA15133@guilt.hydra> <20110317173557.131dddd5@scorpio> <20110317223637.GA15933@guilt.hydra> <20110317194858.61c4a03b@scorpio> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/signed; micalg=pgp-sha1; protocol="application/pgp-signature"; boundary="2oS5YaxWCcQjTEyO" Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: User-Agent: Mutt/1.4.2.3i X-Identified-User: {2737:box543.bluehost.com:apotheon:apotheon.org} {sentby:smtp auth 24.8.180.234 authed with ren@apotheon.org} Subject: Re: HAL must die! X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Fri, 18 Mar 2011 00:46:55 -0000 --2oS5YaxWCcQjTEyO Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable On Thu, Mar 17, 2011 at 08:27:32PM -0400, Daniel Staal wrote: >=20 > The additional knowledge that Linux supports them means the manufacturer= =20 > isn't totally closed to supporting Open-source software, but tells us=20 > nothing beyond that. Linux's support may be by way of a binary blob from= =20 > Linksys, which doesn't help FreeBSD at all. The cards would still need t= o=20 > be reverse-engineered from scratch. It doesn't even tell us that much. It may be that someone decided to spend an incredible amount of time and energy reverse-engineering the hardware interface for the device and the driver software used on another OS, then built a driver that has for some reason (probably licensing) presented enough of a challenge to incorporation into a BSD Unix system that building something similarly for FreeBSD has proved challenging (to put it kindly). >=20 > If the manufacturer releases some technical documents on how to talk to t= he=20 > cards, that's a start at helping people write drivers. Even if they do= =20 > nothing else. >=20 > But chewing out Chad because he makes the guess that two cards he knows= =20 > nothing about are not supported because the manufacturer hasn't supplied= =20 > the support to make them supported (which they probably have on at least= =20 > Windows, if not Linux as well) is just blaming him for not being able to= =20 > read your mind about hardware you have in hand. Thanks. --=20 Chad Perrin [ original content licensed OWL: http://owl.apotheon.org ] --2oS5YaxWCcQjTEyO Content-Type: application/pgp-signature Content-Disposition: inline -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2.0.14 (FreeBSD) iEYEARECAAYFAk2CqMAACgkQ9mn/Pj01uKWTzwCgpPi1Fi9YFKoqEofCa57DviD0 +OkAnifrrAmT7oBfKRsNQ/82W3H9n+Zs =1j7s -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- --2oS5YaxWCcQjTEyO--