iLiad Writing driver for GPS Compact Flash on Iliad

[illiad_fan]

Hi Iliad gurus,
I'm writing one driver for Haicom GPS Compact Flash on Iliad, but I don't know how to find the port, IRQ and memory address of Compact Flash Reader on Iliad. Is there any know how to get it? Please give me your advice! Thank you very much!

[simond]

I'm not an Iliad guru but knowing Linux I'd say the first thing to do is check if the GPS appears as just another serial port already.

[illiad_fan]

Originally Posted by simond

I'm not an Iliad guru but knowing Linux I'd say the first thing to do is check if the GPS appears as just another serial port already.

Hi Simond,
Thank for your reply. I plug-in GPS card into Compact Flash slot, but nothing appears. How to get information about Compact Flash slot?
I tried with:
cat /proc/iomem
output:
00000000-0001ffff : TrueFFS Device
a0000000-a3ffffff : System RAM
a001a000-a013502f : Kernel code
a0135030-a0179cfb : Kernel data

cat /proc/ioport
output:nothing

I don't understand all above data

[Antartica]

Originally Posted by illiad_fan

Hi Simond,
Thank for your reply. I plug-in GPS card into Compact Flash slot, but nothing appears. How to get information about Compact Flash slot?
I tried with:
cat /proc/iomem
cat /proc/ioport
I don't understand all above data

AFAIK, ConpactFash works as the old ISA cards, not as the PCI and derivative cards. That means that there is no plug-and-play, so you cannot query the card in an standarized way to get the mapped memory regions or the io ports.

You will have to read the programming manuals for the card on how to probe the different possible locations for mem and io.

In the driver code you register the found locations against Linux and only then they will appear in the /proc/ files you mention.

P.S.: there is a cardbus interface or something similar (card services), but I've not looked at them. Perhaps it can convey some information about the recently plugged card...

[illiad_fan]

Originally Posted by Antartica

AFAIK, ConpactFash works as the old ISA cards, not as the PCI and derivative cards. That means that there is no plug-and-play, so you cannot query the card in an standarized way to get the mapped memory regions or the io ports.

You will have to read the programming manuals for the card on how to probe the different possible locations for mem and io.

In the driver code you register the found locations against Linux and only then they will appear in the /proc/ files you mention.

P.S.: there is a cardbus interface or something similar (card services), but I've not looked at them. Perhaps it can convey some information about the recently plugged card...

Hi Antartica,
Thank you very much for your advice. I'm probing on the memory region of ISA (from 0xA0000 to 0x100000). But I don't have any programming manual of my Haicom GPS card and CF slot on Iliad for finding exactly where it's. This is first time I write program communicate to hardware. Could you please give me some advices?

[Antartica]

Originally Posted by illiad_fan

Hi Antartica,
Thank you very much for your advice. I'm probing on the memory region of ISA (from 0xA0000 to 0x100000). But I don't have any programming manual of my Haicom GPS card and CF slot on Iliad for finding exactly where it's. This is first time I write program communicate to hardware. Could you please give me some advices?

First of all, you have to search the internet to see if what you intend to do has already been done. Indeed, searching a little in google for linux or BSD support for a CompactFlash Haicom GPS gets some results.

The most promising is this one:

http://www.oesf.org/forum/index.php?showtopic=13206

where they state that the Haicom 303mmf works using the serial_cs.o module. And the report is for an old OpenZaurus version, which is good as that also uses kernel 2.4 (OpenZaurus is a distribution very similar to the one in the iliad, as both are created with the OpenEmbedded framework).

If the GPS you use isn't supported by any driver (nor in Linux nor in the BSDs; searching also for drivers in the BSDs is important as it can be of a lot of help, teaching you the way to make it work easing the writing of your Linux driver), the next step is localizing what chips that card uses; find some photos of one dismantled or dismantle your's if you are proficient in those matters.

Once you have the chip models and the company who has produced them, it's time to search for manuals of those chips in the internet. Normally that is the only information you need to write a driver, but someimes some details about that specific "implementation" is needed and your best bet is to attempt to contact the company hoping that there is some way to get the e-mail to the techs and ask them ;-).

Basically that have worked for me in the drivers I've written (alas, they were for internal use so they are not public :-/ ).

So, first try if you can get it working using the serial_cs.o module ;-)

Good luck! Antartica

[illiad_fan]

Hi Antartica,
I found that serial_cs module can work with my GPS card and I can get data from it through /dev/ttyS3 from your link.
Thank you very much !

Originally Posted by Antartica

First of all, you have to search the internet to see if what you intend to do has already been done. Indeed, searching a little in google for linux or BSD support for a CompactFlash Haicom GPS gets some results.

The most promising is this one:

http://www.oesf.org/forum/index.php?showtopic=13206

where they state that the Haicom 303mmf works using the serial_cs.o module. And the report is for an old OpenZaurus version, which is good as that also uses kernel 2.4 (OpenZaurus is a distribution very similar to the one in the iliad, as both are created with the OpenEmbedded framework).

If the GPS you use isn't supported by any driver (nor in Linux nor in the BSDs; searching also for drivers in the BSDs is important as it can be of a lot of help, teaching you the way to make it work easing the writing of your Linux driver), the next step is localizing what chips that card uses; find some photos of one dismantled or dismantle your's if you are proficient in those matters.

Once you have the chip models and the company who has produced them, it's time to search for manuals of those chips in the internet. Normally that is the only information you need to write a driver, but someimes some details about that specific "implementation" is needed and your best bet is to attempt to contact the company hoping that there is some way to get the e-mail to the techs and ask them ;-).

Basically that have worked for me in the drivers I've written (alas, they were for internal use so they are not public :-/ ).

So, first try if you can get it working using the serial_cs.o module ;-)

Good luck! Antartica