bewan : most uglier driver

[Gilles Espinasse]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "matthieu castet" <castet.matthieu at free.fr>
To: <usbatm at lists.infradead.org>
Sent: Monday, July 18, 2005 7:42 PM
Subject: bewan : most uglier driver


> Hi,
>
> last week as a friend have some problem with his modem a bewan usb adsl,
> I look the driver they provide for linux [1].
> The driver support usb and pci device and seem able to use atm interface
> or use a fake ethernet interface.
>
> The pci driver seem to provide raw atm packet so I believe it could be
> interresting to split usbatm into a raw atm driver and an usb part.
>
> But the firmware seem to be excecuted on the host cpu, for that they
> need to include in their driver a libm !!!

it may be the case of the pci driver but this can't apply to the usb model
;-)
the pci flavor is a controller-less chip (meaning calculations are made on
the host computer)


> Also there are in their driver some c++ file (don't know if they are
> realy used in normal case).

Those files are used. I have already frozen the host by miscompilated c++.
And I have a c++ related problem with them and ssp under 2.6.11.

>
> Weel I think the "Swapping to the host computer " from ADI is beat by
> this desing ;)
>
I am not qualified to note the software design.
My understanding is that the module is hudge (because the firmware is
include). So it take some time (a few sec on a P200) to unzip/load the
gziped module in memory.

I know too this is the only adsl pci driver with a clear and true license
allowing distribution of the compilated module with include firmware.

Gilles