Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1760154AbXLOW7k (ORCPT ); Sat, 15 Dec 2007 17:59:40 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S1752539AbXLOW7c (ORCPT ); Sat, 15 Dec 2007 17:59:32 -0500 Received: from ogre.sisk.pl ([217.79.144.158]:45762 "EHLO ogre.sisk.pl" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1751867AbXLOW7b convert rfc822-to-8bit (ORCPT ); Sat, 15 Dec 2007 17:59:31 -0500 From: "Rafael J. Wysocki" To: Michael Buesch Subject: Re: [PATCH 3/3] net: wireless: bcm43xx: big_buffer_sem semaphore to mutex Date: Sun, 16 Dec 2007 00:18:43 +0100 User-Agent: KMail/1.9.6 (enterprise 20070904.708012) Cc: bcm43xx-dev@lists.berlios.de, Simon Holm =?utf-8?q?Th=C3=B8gersen?= , Daniel Walker , akpm@linux-foundation.org, Ray Lee , matthias.kaehlcke@gmail.com, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, linux@bohmer.net, kjwinchester@gmail.com, jonathan@jonmasters.org, Ingo Molnar References: <20071213003028.676998182@mvista.com> <200712150151.49025.rjw@sisk.pl> <200712151157.44278.mb@bu3sch.de> In-Reply-To: <200712151157.44278.mb@bu3sch.de> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8BIT Content-Disposition: inline Message-Id: <200712160018.45613.rjw@sisk.pl> Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 2102 Lines: 51 On Saturday, 15 of December 2007, Michael Buesch wrote: > On Saturday 15 December 2007 01:51:47 Rafael J. Wysocki wrote: > > On Friday, 14 of December 2007, Michael Buesch wrote: > > > On Friday 14 December 2007 13:59:54 Simon Holm Thøgersen wrote: > > > > > This user did get the following messages in dmesg: > > > > > > > > > > b43err(dev->wl, "Firmware file \"%s\" not found " > > > > > "or load failed.\n", path); > > > > > > > > So the question seems to be why b43 needs version 4, when b43legacy and > > > > bcm43x uses version 3? > > > > > > That's really a question, right? > > > > > > Well. linux-2.4 doesn't work with the linux-2.6 modutils. > > > Windows Vista doesn't work with Windows 98 device drivers. > > > That leads to this assumption: > > > b43 doesn't work with version 3 firmware but needs version 4. > > > > > > Newer drivers supporting newer hardware need newer firmware. > > > > Actually, can you explain why, from the technical point of view, the version 4 > > firware is better than version 3, please? > > version 4 is the new firmware released by broadcom. They obviously won't > support and write any version 3 firmware anymore. So we are forced to > switch to version 4 firmware to support the newest hardware (like N-PHY > in the future). It's really as simple as that. I see, thanks. > The difference between v3 and v4 is basically the driver API. It changed > a lot and it is nontrivial to support both v3 and v4 in one driver. > So we decided to stay with v3 for legacy devices and take v4 for any newer > devices. This is reasonable, yes. > We have to live with that crap until someone comes up with an opensource > firmware. :) Well, the only problem with that is I suspect there are some "newer" cards that work better with v3 firmware, although they are supposed to support both. Greetings, Rafael -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/