Re: [FC1], 2.6.8-rc2 kernel, new motherboard problems

From: Lee Revell
Date: Sat Jul 24 2004 - 13:01:58 EST


On Sat, 2004-07-24 at 08:16, Carl-Daniel Hailfinger wrote:
> Gene Heskett schrieb:
>
> > On Saturday 24 July 2004 02:06, Lee Revell wrote:

> >>>>Wow, nVidia won't release the specs for a *10/100 ethernet
> >>>>controller*? Having to reverse engineer a network driver is
> >>>>ridiculous in this day and age. I can understand binary-only
> >>>>graphics drivers, there is a lot of valuable IP in there, but
> >>>>this is a freaking network card. What do they expect people to
> >>>>do?
> >>>>
> >>>>Maybe some bad press would set them straight.
> >>>>
> >>>>Lee
>
> Could you please check the facts (or ask the driver authors) before
> suggesting to haunt NVidia with bad press? Thanks.
>

All the facts I needed to know were in the original post. You had to
reverse engineer a network driver because Nvidia would not release
specs. We should not be having to reverse engineer a 10/100 ethernet
controller in 2004. The Linux community should make noise when vendors
do this.

> > I'm under the impression the forcedeth writers did have access to this
> > data. Is this incorrect? The question is directed at the forcedeth
> > authors. If you are one, then please clarify.
>
> I am one of the authors. We did not have any information in the first
> place, but now that our reverse engineered driver works well, NVidia
> contributed bugfixes and gigabit support to our driver.

This is pretty shoddy on their part. Like I said, I can understand not
wanting to release the specs for their GFX cards, but a freaking 10/100
ethernet controller is ridiculous.

Lee


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