Re: Update: emu1212m

[James Courtier-Dutton <James@superbug.co.uk>]

James Courtier-Dutton wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> This is just a quick note to say that I have made some progress with the
> alsa support for emu1212m.
> Summary:
> If one cold boots to windows, and then warm boots to linux, I have
> managed to get SPDIF out working on the emu1212m.
> This is good news, because I have managed to determine the final bit of
> work required to get the emu1212m working in Linux.
> The emu1212m has a FPGA on it.
> 1) The FPGA array is filled with the netlists.
> 2) The FPGA now has registers that can be read and written to switch
> features on and off. E.g. spdif out or adat out.
> 
> Now, I have done a lot of the work for step 2. I just need to work out
> how to do step 1 now.
> Step 1 happens on cold boot, and survives a warm boot.
> Step 2 is already understood in the Linux driver.
> 
> Summary:
> TODO: Step 1.
> 
> James
> 
Update: I have now discovered how 1 works. I just need to write some
code to get it working.

Question:
For (1), the FPGA array is filled with 78756 bytes of netlist code.
I suppose one could consider this 78756 bytes as firmware.
Should this firmware sit somewhere in userspace?
The trouble is, that if one changes some controls on the device, e.g.
switching from SPDIF to ADAT digital outputs, a whole new different
firmware image is loaded. So, one has multiple different firmware
images, with one swapping between them. Should these firmware images be
left in the kernel then, instead of using the userspace firmware api?

James