Re: NetBSD Driver upgrade

[christos%astron.com@localhost (Christos Zoulas)]

In article <47879BDE0200003F00010C16%NODE02.crp.local@localhost>,
David Dudley <DavidDu%cctexas.com@localhost> wrote:
>-=-=-=-=-=-
>
>I'm working on engineering and development of a project and need a
>little advise:
>
>1. My application is for industrial networking and control systems,
>using embedded hardware (currently developing applications on a Soekris
>Net5501 card, with Argonne National Labs EPICS control software).  I
>picked NetBSD because it was supported on so many different hardware
>platforms, and therefore seemed a better candidate for use if a
>different piece of hardware was used in the future.  From the list of
>products it supports, it seems probable that anything I might end up
>using, NetBSD would be most likely to be able to run on.
>
>There seems to be some concern as to whether FreeBSD, NetBSD, or Linux
>is a better choice in this situation.  I discount Linux totally, because
>I don't see it as being flexible enough for this application, and I can
>only count on limited amounts of resources in the target system, and
>Linux definitely isn't a 'small' system.  I would consider NetBSD to be
>a better choice for this, but can I get some opinions on this choice?
>
>2. Due to the sensitive nature of these systems (I'm working on the
>Municipal Water Supply system right now, but the Natural Gas system is
>probably the next candidate), we fall under Public Safety jurisdiction,
>and have therefore been instructed to attempt to use the 4.9 Ghz public
>Safety band.
>
>Ubiquiti networks has developed the SuperRange-4 networking card that
>uses that frequency band, but it is based on the AR5414 chipset, which
>is not currently supported by NetBSD.
>
>Are there any plans in the near future to upgrade the NetBSD driver to
>support this chipset?  The FreeBSD driver already supports it, which is
>a plus in that column, but for flexibility I can put a plus in the
>NetBSD column, which equalizes the field.  If there are plans in the
>works for re-importing the driver from Free, which is what was done
>previously, I can still put a plus in 'Net's column, which puts Net out
>in front, again.
>
>Any opinions or suggestions?

If there is a FreeBSD driver for the chip you want, we can easily port
it to NetBSD.

christos