hi
Are there currently any official kernel support for the Sigma 8400/8401
chips?
I need this...
Please cc: to me as I'm not on the list
roy
---
Praktiserende dyslektiker.
La ikke ortografiske krumspring skygge for
intensjonen bak denne fremstilling.
http://www.sigmadesigns.com/support/download_netstream2000_linux.htm
contains official binary only drivers for the Netstream2000 card which uses
the em8400 chip.
If you are using the chip to implement your own board then you should
contact sigma designs for Linux drivers. They say the chip has linux
support on:
http://www.sigmadesigns.com/products/em8400.htm
As Sigma designs do not release specs nor sourcecode there is no open
source driver available and I am not aware of any non-official efforts to
produce drivers.
If you want the em8300 chip then have a look at http://dxr3.sf.net/ where
you can find the inofficial Linux GPL drivers for the Sigma designs
Realmagic Hollywood+ and Creative dxr3 cards (which are the same).
HTH,
Anton
At 16:12 31/10/01, Roy Sigurd Karlsbakk wrote:
>hi
>
>Are there currently any official kernel support for the Sigma 8400/8401
>chips?
>I need this...
>
>Please cc: to me as I'm not on the list
>
>roy
>
>---
>Praktiserende dyslektiker.
>La ikke ortografiske krumspring skygge for
>intensjonen bak denne fremstilling.
>
>-
>To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
>the body of a message to [email protected]
>More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
>Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
--
"I've not lost my mind. It's backed up on tape somewhere." - Unknown
--
Anton Altaparmakov <aia21 at cam.ac.uk> (replace at with @)
Linux NTFS Maintainer / WWW: http://linux-ntfs.sf.net/
ICQ: 8561279 / WWW: http://www-stu.christs.cam.ac.uk/~aia21/
> As Sigma designs do not release specs nor sourcecode there is no open
> source driver available and I am not aware of any non-official efforts to
> produce drivers.
strange...
I found a package called NetStream2000-0.2.047.1.tar.gz with these drivers
with source on Sigma's site. I also found tech spec on the EM840[01] open
on their sites, although the document was marked 'confidential'.
> If you want the em8300 chip then have a look at http://dxr3.sf.net/ where
> you can find the inofficial Linux GPL drivers for the Sigma designs
> Realmagic Hollywood+ and Creative dxr3 cards (which are the same).
>
> HTH,
>
> Anton
>
> At 16:12 31/10/01, Roy Sigurd Karlsbakk wrote:
> >hi
> >
> >Are there currently any official kernel support for the Sigma 8400/8401
> >chips?
> >I need this...
> >
> >Please cc: to me as I'm not on the list
> >
> >roy
> >
> >---
> >Praktiserende dyslektiker.
> >La ikke ortografiske krumspring skygge for
> >intensjonen bak denne fremstilling.
> >
> >-
> >To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
> >the body of a message to [email protected]
> >More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
> >Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
>
> --
> "I've not lost my mind. It's backed up on tape somewhere." - Unknown
> --
> Anton Altaparmakov <aia21 at cam.ac.uk> (replace at with @)
> Linux NTFS Maintainer / WWW: http://linux-ntfs.sf.net/
> ICQ: 8561279 / WWW: http://www-stu.christs.cam.ac.uk/~aia21/
>
Roy Sigurd Karlsbakk wrote:
> strange...
> I found a package called NetStream2000-0.2.047.1.tar.gz with
> these drivers
> with source on Sigma's site.
That GPL'ed source code (from the "kernelmode" directory of the tarball)
contains only the source for the interface between the driver and the
kernel. Compiling that gives you a small module, but AFIK, there is no way
(well, no documentation) to use that module to actually do anything useful
or interesting.
To actually do anything (like decode MPEG-2 video) with the hardware, you
use the large (400K) closed-source libEM8400.so library. That library talks
to the hardware using the module. I suppose you could try to
reverse-engineer that by observing all the communication between the lib and
the driver, but that's probably not allowed.
So, in short: The only documentation is on how to use libEM8400, and that's
closed source. But hey, it works, so things could be worse.
(I suppose one could have an discussion on the legality of this GPL'ed
kernel module / closed driver, but I'm sure most readers of the list are
sick and tired of amateur legal discussion, I guess Sigma's lawyers decided
it was legal, and they know better than me.)
Torrey
At 19:44 31/10/01, Roy Sigurd Karlsbakk wrote:
> > As Sigma designs do not release specs nor sourcecode there is no open
> > source driver available and I am not aware of any non-official efforts to
> > produce drivers.
>
>strange...
>I found a package called NetStream2000-0.2.047.1.tar.gz with these drivers
>with source on Sigma's site.
Yeah, right. Why don't you download that tar ball, unpack it, and have a
look what it contains before disseminating uninformed, and incorrect
information?!?
To quote from the main readme of above tar ball:
"shared object libraries (libEM8400.so, libosd.so) in lib/
are only available in binary form.
Copyrighted (C) 1999-2000 Sigma Designs"
Those libraries are EVERYTHING that matters. And they are _binary_ only.
The stuff that is actually given as source and even as GPL is just glue
code which defines an API to access the binary only library and kernel
modules which cause the library to be hooked into the kernel. This is just
about as far as you can get from open source drivers!
>I also found tech spec on the EM840[01] open on their sites, although the
>document was marked 'confidential'.
Ok, so I am stupid and am unable to find this document. Why don't you email
me the URL so I can download it and see for myself? I would really very
much appreciate it!!!
Best regards,
Anton
--
"I've not lost my mind. It's backed up on tape somewhere." - Unknown
--
Anton Altaparmakov <aia21 at cam.ac.uk> (replace at with @)
Linux NTFS Maintainer / WWW: http://linux-ntfs.sf.net/
ICQ: 8561279 / WWW: http://www-stu.christs.cam.ac.uk/~aia21/