Date: Thu, 18 Mar 1999 17:46:01 +0000 From: Scott Mitchell <scott@dcs.qmw.ac.uk> To: freebsd-mobile@FreeBSD.ORG Cc: Mike Kephart <mkephart@nortelnetworks.com>, Kenneth Ingham <ingham@i-pi.com>, Alan DuBoff <aland@SoftOrchestra.com>, Dru Nelson <dnelson@redwoodsoft.com>, Colin Eric Johnson <colinj@cs.unm.edu>, Brian Handy <handy@lambic.physics.montana.edu>, Michael Robinson <robinson@netrinsics.com>, Joe Abley <jabley@clear.co.nz>, "Jordan K . Hubbard" <jkh@FreeBSD.ORG>, Poul-Henning Kamp <phk@FreeBSD.ORG>, Nate Williams <nate@FreeBSD.ORG>, Warner Losh <imp@FreeBSD.ORG>, Garrett Wollman <wollman@FreeBSD.ORG>, Doug White <dwhite@FreeBSD.ORG>, Doug Rabson <dfr@FreeBSD.ORG>, Mike Smith <mike@smith.net.au> Subject: PCCARD support -- welcome to the revolution! Message-ID: <19990318174601.C7591@dcs.qmw.ac.uk>
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Hi all,
If you've been following -mobile lately, you may have noted that, in true
Soviet style, an electorate of one (Jordan) has elected the sole candidate
(me) to the sought-after post of 'point guy' for the PCCARD support
effort...if someone else wants the job, speak up now (please) :)
Seriously though, it looks as though no-one else out there is dumb enough
to take this on, so here I am. As I said earlier, I can't devote much time
to this for the next couple of months, but I figure it will take that long
to get things rolling anyway. One thing I will state for the record is
that I'm *not* out to tread on anyone's toes or impose some grand
all-encompassing vision on the project. If you're already working on
something PCCARD-related, way cool, just let us know what you're doing;
chances are someone else can offer some help. I see my role in this as
providing a focal point for all the individual work that is already going
on, and co-ordination for the too-much-for-one-person things that need
doing. Oh, and I'd like to write some code too...
So what are we aiming to achieve? In approximate order of difficulty, it
seems to me that what we need to work on is:
- New drivers, for PCCARD controllers and cards. These may be home-grown,
brought in from PAO, ported from Linux, whatever. There seems to be a
lot of this going on already, where people have cards that don't work
and are hacking up drivers for them.
- Reworking the support for a whole bunch of purely PCCARD issues. The
ones that spring to mind (in that they've bugged me lately) are:
- Multifunction card support
- CardBus support
- Improved userland utilities (pccardd/pccardc)
- Kernel support for e.g. reading the CIS of a card
- Graceful recovery from unexpected card removal
etc, etc. I'm sure there's a lot more. I hope that a lot of this can
be worked on with needing to rewite the _whole_ PCCARD support
framework, although my list already seems to be picking on a goodly
chunk of it...
- Fitting PCMCIA/CardBus into the 'new bus' and 'dynamic device' support
that is apparently somewhere in the pipeline. I expect this _will_
involve a rewrite of most of the support code and drivers :( For now I
guess we should be tracking what's going on in that area, and making
appropriate suggestions to ease the pain of transition when the time
comes.
So there you go. Anyone with any interest in working on any part of this,
please drop me an email (some of you I've heard from already, you're on the
Cc: list of this message). I'd particularly like to hear from the 'new
bus' folks (Garrett? Doug? -- hope I tagged the right people there) as to
what the current state of this is and which bits of the source we should be
grokking. Help at any level is much appreciated -- from kernel hackers to
those who juat don't mind having to reinstall when some evil sub-alpha code
trashes their disks.
Various people on the list have recommended books -- any other suggestions?
I'm going to obtain some of these RSN, but I obviously can't afford to buy
them all! [Mike: is the offer of assistance in obtaining the official
standard still open? What do we need to do?]. I personally don't feel
confident taking on anything more fundamental than drivers for specific
cards until I've read some of this stuff. Pointers to freely-available
controller & card docs from manufacturers would also be welcomed.
The UK FreeBSD users group is supporting this effort with web space and
other 'net resources -- I'll let you all know the URL once I get the
account set up. Note: everyone reading this in the UK should join this
group; if nothing else, it's great value for money ;-)
OK, enough waffle from me. This thing is only going to go anywhere if
other people get behind it, so please get in touch, tell me what you're
doing, tell me I'm full of BS, tell me what direction *you* think this
project should be taking. I'm the point man, so I have to expect to get
shot at sometimes...
Looking forward to working with you all,
Scott
--
===========================================================================
Scott Mitchell | PGP Key ID |"If I can't have my coffee, I'm just
<scott@dcs.qmw.ac.uk> | 0x54B171B9 | like a dried up piece of roast goat"
QMW College, London, UK | 0xAA775B8B | -- J. S. Bach.
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