From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Date: Tue, 8 Mar 2005 17:37:07 -0600 From: George Michaelson To: Fans of the OS Plan 9 from Bell Labs <9fans@cse.psu.edu> Subject: Re: [9fans] Native vs Emulated Message-ID: <20050308173707.01d5c668@garlique> In-Reply-To: <026cbb59bf5922249b10c565ea9d8059@terzarima.net> References: <026cbb59bf5922249b10c565ea9d8059@terzarima.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Cc: forsyth@terzarima.net Topicbox-Message-UUID: 21284f52-ead0-11e9-9d60-3106f5b1d025 the X31 I am on in NetBSD has atheros drivers, which I think may be sam leffler's work in both Free and NetBSD. It uses the binary only HAL code. is there some codebase outside of the HAL stuff? -G --- $NetBSD$ $Id: README,v 1.2 2004/05/15 22:26:25 samleffler Exp $ WARNING: THIS IS A BETA DISTRIBUTION. THIS SOFTWARE HAS KNOWN PROBLEMS AND WARNING: LIMITATIONS THAT WILL BE CORRECTED BEFORE A PRODUCTION RELEASE. WARNING: USE AT YOUR OWN RISK! Atheros Hardware Access Layer (HAL) =================================== * Copyright (c) 2002-2004 Sam Leffler. * Copyright (c) 2002-2004 Atheros Communications, Inc. * All rights reserved. Read the file COPYRIGHT for the complete copyright. This code manages much of the chip-specific operation of the Atheros driver. The HAL is provided in a binary-only form in order to comply with FCC regulations. In particular, a radio transmitter can only be operated at power levels and on frequency channels for which it is approved. The FCC requires that a software-defined radio cannot be configured by a user to operate outside the approved power levels and frequency channels. This makes it difficult to open-source code that enforces limits on the power levels, frequency channels and other parameters of the radio transmitter. See http://ftp.fcc.gov/Bureaus/Engineering_Technology/Orders/2001/fcc01264.pdf for the specific FCC regulation. Because the module is provided in a binary-only form it is marked "Proprietary"; this means when you load it you will see messages that your system is now "tainted". If you wish to use this driver on a platform for which an ath_hal module is not already provided please contact the author. Note that this is only necessary for new _architectures_; the HAL is not tied to any specific version of your operating system. : : :