>One thread might be hanging in a USB bus transaction when the watchdog
>call comes.
>Then there is no thread vailable to reset the adapter.  This could probably
>be worked
>around, though.

Hmm, I'd say this is important enough to merit two threads,
if that's what it takes to do it right.

> A problem is that servicing on of these calls can take a long time
>(several ms since
> it needs several bus transactions), and during that time the thread
>will no be able to
> respond to other service requests.

Having to use an RPC for every register access is pretty gross, and one
hopes that the official USB ethernet interface definition will do
something better!

However this type of driver problem is likely to happen with more devices
in the future, so it would be good to have working code in the tree that
can be used for future reference.

Todd Whitesel
toddpw @ best.com