[Gllug] Anyone having broadband (probably PlusNet) problems today?

[Ian Norton]

On Mon, Mar 28, 2005 at 10:22:51PM +0100, Russell Howe wrote:
> On Thu, Mar 24, 2005 at 08:49:05PM +0000, Ian Norton wrote:
> > The drivers for the connexant based pci modems arent fully opensource, (it has
> > firmware it uploads to the ARM on the modem afaik) but I've had it
> > running perfectly fine for about 4 months, it needs a redial occasionally but
> > that could just be my local loop,
> I would be suprised if the binary part is firmware uploaded to the card.
> I suspect it is binary code which is loaded into your kernel and
> executed there. That's what things like the Unicorn drivers do (for the
> Bewan cards), the nvidia closed-source drivers and the Atheros
> 802.11a/b/g madwifi drivers do.

Just had a quick look at the Cnx-ADSL stuff I have on my box, it has
source-based[1] drivers that deal with talking to the modem and interfacing 
it with the ATM system in linux. it also includes a firmware download app 
which you  need to run after loading the driver, otherwise the card ignores 
everything.

It's source claims to read a hex record and converts it to a binary format
and uploads it to the modem.

I dare say this could be reverse engineered as it's the ARM object code
(maybe thumb) for this modem (it has a standard ARM7 chip plonked on). 
Indeed, you could probably find that this modem could run linux :-)

Ill have to get the latest madwifi drivers, I'm still using the hybrid
free/closed driver and I get some wierd stuff when running at anything over
30mbits.

Ian

[1]the first lines of one file I have from them reads :
****   CONFIDENTIAL and  PROPRIETARY --
****            No Dissemination or use without prior written permission.'

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