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From: "Luis R. Rodriguez" <mcgrof@gmail.com>
Date: Wed, 1 Jul 2009 11:12:03 -0700
Message-ID: <43e72e890907011112l220874bbu8db8808f666bbd4d@mail.gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [PATCH] Add prism 2/3 usb adaptor firmware for use with
	staging/wlan-ng driver.
To: Dave <kilroyd@googlemail.com>
Cc: Karl Relton <karllinuxtest.relton@ntlworld.com>,
	dwmw2@infradead.org, linux-wireless@vger.kernel.org
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Sender: linux-wireless-owner@vger.kernel.org

On Wed, Jul 1, 2009 at 10:51 AM, Dave<kilroyd@googlemail.com> wrote:
> Karl Relton wrote:
>> On Tue, 2009-06-30 at 14:58 -0700, Luis R. Rodriguez wrote:
>>> Why all the srec->binary conversion? Doesn't this waste space on
>>> people's firmware directories?
>>>
>> Yes, technically it does. The srec file is ~185KB, a binary image would
>> be ~64KB.
>>
>> The reason it was left is that the driver has to do some runtime
>> plugging of data into the image, so pre-compilation would have meant
>> inventing both a compiler tool and an intermediate format for the driver
>> to read and process. Putting all the srec processing in the driver was
>> more expedient (just meant porting existing userspace code into driver
>> space).
>
> I can't find the wlan_ng request_firmware call in my wireless-testing
> tree (week or so old). Is that new?
>
> From what I can tell the wlan_ng, hostap and orinoco drivers all program
> firmware that has the same basic format. Hostap doesn't use
> request_firmware, and gives userspace the control over the write
> sequence. orinoco places a very simple header in front of the binary image.
>
> Do we really want to add srec processing to the driver (or even the kernel)?
>
> It would be nice if the FW image was in the same format for orinoco and
> wlan_ng, as the prism firmware ought to work on non-USB prism cards, and
> we should be able to make orinoco use it.

I never got the wlan_ng stuff.. Anyway now it is under
drivers/staging/wlan-ng. I was under the impression it targeted some
devices not covered by hostapd or orinoco, is that no the case?

  Luis