Fwd: Linux guru needed to write device driver. Burlington, Massachusetts.

[wizard at neonedge.com (Wizard)]

> Keep in mind that I'm a high-level programmer (perl) so I have no direct
> knowledge of device drivers. But I learned perl by looking at existing
> scripts/modules and figuring out what they do. So I bet you could do the
> same for a driver for a similar device and figure out how it works, then
> apply that knowledge to hacking out a driver (perhaps based on your
> example) for your device. I'm sure there must be good examples out there
> you can start from.

I'm not so sure it's that easy. I haven't written any true OS device
drivers, but I have written hardware-level code, 8051 embedded code, and
80x86 assembly language stuff, and for that I really had to understand some
things about how the hardware itself worked (I/O lines, fetch/store
procedures, memory addressing, timings, etc). Much of the interfaces to the
hardware on the platforms that I have worked were basically just simple
re-implementations of what the chips on the board did. I have an electronics
background, so I understood how the chips themselves worked and could see it
in the interface. I don't know that it would be a simple thing for someone
lacking that experience to just 'pick-up' (I could easily be wrong though).
I don't think that most high-level languages like Perl, Tcl, C++, or even C
reflect what the machine is actually doing.

Grant M.