> A brief Introduction
> I am a Windoze user, programmer, system administrator. compitent in C/C++,
> Delphi, Visual Basic and more. I also am a little more than a newbe to linux
> with several computers running Windows version x and Linux mostlly using
> Lucent Viking modems.
>
> I have been trying to make these work in linux and have been reading all of
> the topics from several mailing lists with very little help until I found
> someone saying that this modem was all software driven (duh I knew that) and
> that the drivers were somekind of seceret (did not know that can't even see
> how, sence i found them?) and that they were not available. Well as of now i
> have the technology (drivers source code) to make the drivers required to
Okay, here is the million dollar question:
Where and how did you get the driver source code?
If you obtained it through legal means, tell everyone else how you did so,
so they can take a look at it too. Post a URL or something.
If the answer something like is "my brother works for Lucent so I asked
him to get it for me" or "I got it off a warez group" then I'm not
interested and I doubt anyone else on this list is, either.
If it's a screwup by one of the modem manufacturers--say, a copy of the
driver was release with full debugging symbols (including source) built
into the executables--then you should probably ask them about making a
derived work.
> run my modem. I can recreate the drivers for windozs make new ones for DOS
> (also not "supported" by the vendor) but i have no ability to program in
> Linux and don't even know where to start. The drivers would need to do 3
> major things
Even if you can write a Linux version, can you legally release it as open
source? Can you even release a binary version?
AFAIK (and this is just speculation, mind you), there are three
non-technical problems that you might face:
1. Would you be breaking the terms of the modem driver license? Is there
any sort of agreement between you and the owner of the code that you have,
such as a non-disclosure agreement, that would prevent you from releasing
your work?
2. Are there any patents that your driver would infringe upon?
3. What about the ITU? Last time I checked, they were charging
decent-sized amounts of money (about $1000 per year per person) for their
telecom specifications. How much of the ITU specs does the driver reveal,
and is that a problem?
>
> 1. initialize the device maybee at a very early stage the ports are turned
> off until initialize is complete and successful.
> 2. process every 32bit word before being sent to the modem.
> 3. process every 32bit word after being recieved by the modem.
>
> I think this might be slightly off topic but am not sure I know that i have
> seen this and simalar topics on this and a few other mailing lists. sorry
> for any inconvience.please feel free to respond even if you don't know how
> to do this as I learn from every comment
> Thank you
> Richard.Reynolds@usa.net
There are a lot of good sources for information on writing Linux device
drivers. Some include The Linux Kernel Hackers' Guide
(http://khg.redhat.com/HyperNews/get/khg.html), The Linux Kernel Module
Programming Guide (http://www.redhat.com/docs/LDP/LDP/lkmpg/mpg.html),
_Linux_Device_Drivers_ by Alessandro Rubini, another book called
_Linux_Kernel_Internals_ (I forget the author's name), and of course (the
most important one) the kernel source itself. Plus there are probably many
more.
If you write an open-source DOS winmodem driver, then someone else will
probably port it to Linux for you... the question is, could they (and you)
get sued for doing it?
Brad
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