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USB bounty complete, only 1 finger needed

Posted by Steve Revill Tue, 23 Jan 2018 20:35:00 GMT

We can now count on just 1 finger the number of steps remaining to overhaul the aging RISC OS USB stack following the completion today of step 1. This initial bounty was carved off a larger block after recognising that the scale of the task couldn’t reasonably be achieved prior to the next stable release of RISC OS (version 5.24), yet we needed some of the work to help towards the Raspberry Pi port.

What did one get in this one?

  • New Programmer’s Reference Manual material
    • Useful to developers working on adding host controllers or writing drivers in future
    • Also available in the StrongHelp OS manuals
  • Internationalised messages, a requirement of all ROM modules
  • The host controller modules (EHCIDriver and OHCIDriver) were split from the main USBDriver source code
    • This model fits more closely how RISC OS is made from lots of small and simple modules
    • Makes it possible to update each one in isolation without fear of breaking the other
  • Greatly reorganised RISC OS kernel start up
    • The power-on-keypress with your pinky to recover a lost boot configuration is now possible on all platforms
    • Previously a special cut down version of the USB drivers were included in the early startup
    • This scheme was difficult to extend to complicated USB drivers, for example like the one on the Raspberry Pi
  • Some minor bugs were fixed in passing


CC-BY Jenny Lee: Lots of fingers needed for Windows

There was even opportunity to undo a few divergences from the NetBSD versions of our USB stack, this makes comparing the changes a little easier, which is part of the task list in step 2…

How many digits in the next one?

The second batch of work is cued up waiting for pledges, this final chunk aims to converge the RISC OS USB stack back with its NetBSD parent where it started from 16 years ago. We’ve given a pointer to the target amount based on our current view of the work, to give an idea of the point at which the odds of starting the work are very high.

Posted in New component, Community | 4 comments

Comments

Comment on this article

  1. nukeedit
    Martin Avison (27) said about 3 hours later:

    Congratulations to all concerned in planning, development and testing this large set of changes. A major achievement indeed.

  2. nukeedit
    Alan Robertson (52) said about 6 hours later:

    Great news indeed. All this progress makes RISC OS more useful every day.

  3. nukeedit
    Jay (408) said about 7 hours later:

    Well done

  4. nukeedit
    David R. Lane (77) said 17 days later:

    It’s great that step 1 has been completed; but will enough be donated for step 2 when it is impossible for RISC OS browsers to manage the PayPal web pages?

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