Driver development

Driver development

[Manousaridis Angelos]

Hello all,

I have a custom video board for a strongARM embedded platform. Its 
purpose is to decode MPEG video streams and display the video on a TV 
screen.
This board uses the Teralogic 751 chip for graphics blending and 
display. The TL751 is connected to an external SDRAM, for framebuffer 
and video storage. It has 4 overlay planes: two for video, one for 
graphics and one for a hw cursor.

I want to write a driver for some applications that require access to 
the graphics plane. These applications will write bitmaps to the 
framebuffer memory of the TL751. I want to avoid using custom 
interfaces, so I thought that it would be a good idea to implement a 
frame buffer device for that purpose.

While looking at the framebuffer API though, I found a some stuff that 
are not applicable for my case.
All that beam tracking and monitor synchronization fields for instance. 
The chip I am using does all that handling because the output is fixed 
to either PAL or NTSC. I want to be able to set these two modes, but I 
don't need all the details (timings, margins etc).
Another issue is with the console stuff. I am not interested in having a 
framebuffer console. All I want is to give apps an API to the 
framebuffer memory. I see a lot of work has been done towards the 
direction of splitting the fb device stuff and the fb console stuff, but 
can I write a fb driver with no reference to fbcon?

Is it possible to implement such a framebuffer driver?
I want to look at some code to understand how the API works. From the 
drivers included in the kernel tree (drivers/video), which are closest 
to what I am trying to do?

thanks in advance,

Manousaridis Angelos



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Driver Development

[Dale Whitchurch]

Hello All!

I am not sure if this is the right forum to post this message, but I figure that this would be a good start.  I have started a program within our company to develop open-source drivers for each of the products that we offer.  Along with that, we are offering a beta program with these devices.

Because most of our devices are expensive, what I have proposed and been approved for is the idea that this program will basically offer beta testers and developers the products at no cost to them, and at the successful completion of the test/development and provided that the person has been beneficial to the program, the person may keep the equipment.

The first program that I want to try this with is a suite of synchronous high-speed serial cards.  If there is anyone interested in this specific program, I would like you to contact me directly.  But, I would also like to spurn a discussion in general about if programs like this have been started before, what types of offerings have occurred, and the success rate of these programs.

And, if this topic is completely off-base, feel free to fire that at me as well.

Thanks

Dale Whitchurch.

Driver Development

[shafa.hidee]

Hi All,
       Is there any driver development project going on where I can try
apply driver development method.

Thanks
Shafa.hidee

Re: Driver Development

[Greg KH]

On Wed, Mar 16, 2005 at 03:07:43PM +0530, shafa.hidee wrote:
> Hi All,
>        Is there any driver development project going on where I can try
> apply driver development method.

What is a "driver development method"?

greg k-h

Re: Driver Development

[Lee Revell]

On Wed, 2005-03-16 at 15:07 +0530, shafa.hidee wrote:
> Hi All,
>        Is there any driver development project going on where I can try
> apply driver development method.
> 

Of all the kernel subsystems ALSA presents one of the cleanest APIs for
driver writers.

http://www.alsa-project.org/~iwai/writing-an-alsa-driver/

And there are several chipsets for which we have docs and no driver.

HTH,

Lee

driver development

[Daniel Miles]

I'm a bit of a novice coder (just a few years of school), is there a
page somewhere that would tell me what I need to learn before I offer my
services?

driver development

[Mark D. Studebaker]

It depends what services you plan to offer :)

Our Documentation page (link on our home page)
has links to just about every document we've written.

We always need testers.

If you have some chip on your board that you would like
to add support for, tell us about the chip and we can help
point you in the right direction.

mds


Daniel Miles wrote:
> 
> I'm a bit of a novice coder (just a few years of school), is there a
> page somewhere that would tell me what I need to learn before I offer my
> services?