222 replies to this topic

[mortis]

Well...

Here are the sources to start developing a driver for Marvell-Yukon, Syskonnect and other NICs

The other thread was going nowhere

Please post on advances, and not requierements on how much you need this driver!

Good Luck.

EDIT: added sources from NetBSD4

Attached Files

•  FreeBSD.zip   38.39K   397 downloads
•  linux.zip   458.11K   254 downloads
•  sk_netbsd4.zip   38.23K   255 downloads

[jegabla]

Apple Network Kernel Extensions Programming Guide:

http://developer.app...P40001858-CH225

[MadHorab]

As I said in the other post, I can host the driver

[altaic]

That network kernel extensions development guide link is broken. Here's a valid one.

[altaic]

I'm a few hundred lines into writing a driver for the yukon (I started it tonight). This is my first device driver, and the apple frameworks require sifting through dev docs, so it may take awhile. Also, I happen to be a student who prioritizes his studies over personal projects, so be patient. I'll post updates here periodically.

Will

[eightballbill]

Thanks Altaic. If you have time, could you explain or give us some link about how to port drivers from BSD to darwin?

[altaic]

It depends entirely on the device. There's a USB example with the ADC Reference Library, as well as a PCMCIA one. There are several audio examples, also. Since plain old PCI doesn't have any examples, I read the Writing PCI Drivers doc, among others I searched for in the ADC.

Basically, one has to write it from scratch, since the code structure is quite different from Apple's frameworks. Reference the other ports, certainly, for things like registers and such. There are sometimes notes about hardware bugs and workarounds, too. So, I guess what I'm saying is that when you sit down to port a driver, you should prepare yourself to write the thing from the bottom up. There is no simple method, of which I am aware.

When I am sure I have the foundation of the driver correct, and I have the licensing crap figured out, I'll post what I've done, so others may fill in the gaps if they so choose.

Will

[aitikin]

altaic, on Dec 5 2005, 01:00 PM, said:

When I am sure I have the foundation of the driver correct, and I have the licensing crap figured out, I'll post what I've done, so others may fill in the gaps if they so choose.

Cool, thanks for your work.  I unfortunately can't code very well but I'm praying someone will figure it out soon.  This is the one thing left before I can move my primary OS to OS X.

[altaic]

Jesus... The registers list just keeps going. I think I'm going to ditch my register structs and use the linux ones instead. Upon further investigation, it looks like the linux ones will work with little modification.

Will

[eightballbill]

Which register base did you use? The BSD's one?

[altaic]

Yeah. The BSD ones are all defines which I was converting to structs, where as the linux ones are all proper structs. I need to pass a struct containing all the hardware registers into the memory-mapper, so I can directly access them.

[autoy]

Hey, this is great news! Glad this project is not dead after all Plase count us in for betatesting!

[eightballbill]

How long do you think it will take to finish the driver? (i don't want to put you under pressure, just to know when you will make us happy ;-)  )

[altaic]

Well, I'm going to try to get basic features working, first, which, when I figure out how the hardware queues work, should be trivial. I'm still working on the registers. It's pretty convoluted. It'll take a while. The more code I read, the more complex and daunting this task is. One step at a time, though.

I know that didn't really answer your question, but I really don't know how long it'll take. It might take a week, or a month or more. Likely more than a week, since I have end-of-semester exams, projects, and crits.

Edited by altaic, 08 December 2005 - 05:30 AM.

[altaic]

I've contacted Marvell, asking if they'd be so kind as to send me the whitepaper describing the registers. It would speed things up tremendously.

[eightballbill]

What did they answer?

[jegabla]

Altaic, have you considered contacting syskonnect? I think their drivers are based on Marvel Yukon chips too.

Edited by jegabla, 13 December 2005 - 09:03 AM.

[mortis]

I did contact syskonnect 1-2 months ago. They replied that OSX driver are not opensource so they wouldn´t releasethem, and x86 platform was not a target for them at that point.

It may be worhtwhile trying to contact the again though.

[eightballbill]

Altaic? Are you there?

[altaic]

Marvell did not respond. Additionally, I'm really busy with exams and such, and then I plan on taking a break for a week or so, so I won't be doing any development for some time.