karl ramberg wrote:
I'm not much help here even if I want too :-) But for the fun of it, what is needed for getting wireless network access working on XO?
Well...
there are two completely different things to do, and then, two completely different venues to achieve them, plus variations:
. We need TCP/IP and 802.11 working on SqueakNOS. We do have a TCP/IP implementation (NetSqueak by Luciano Notarfrancesco), and we know it's working up to some point. However, it has never been fully integrated into Squeak (you can open TCP connections, both incoming and outgoing, but the programing interface is not the standard Squeak API, so we need to glue the two things together). Then, even if TCP/IP is working, we need to have 802.11 support, but this, I think, is not too much.
. Then, we need hardware support. For this, we can either implement everything in Squeak (as it should be!), or piggy back on top of what OpenFirmware exposes. In the latter case, we could also piggy back, somehow, on the TCP/IP implementation from OpenFirmware, or maybe only on its 802.11 implementation, and put our TCP/IP on top of it.
Any of the options would get us WiFi working. We could start with the simplest, and move to the more complete full-Squeak implementation.
Now. what specific things could somebody do to help? many!
Separated by resource and skills needs:
1. Make TCP/IP as it is today in SquealNOS work: Although it does work now, we need to further test it in the real world, and, more important, glue it to Squeak's TCP/IP API. How to do it?
Either get a computer with a Realtek 8139 or use VMWare with an emulated LancePCI card, and get the WebBrowser and VNC clients/server in Squeak to work... without any modifications to them, just modifying SqueakNOS' TCP/IP implementation, and adding some glue code. To start this, no other knowledge than Squeak is required, some TCP/IP may help (specially if things don't work). No special hardware is required if you are going to use VMWare. And this step is important not only to get WiFi, but also for many many purposes (having TCP/IP working is very important, of course, but I'm thinking on remote storage, for example).
2. Start working on the WiFi low level driver. i.e. write the "device driver". Using the two ethernet drivers (Realtek8139 and LancePCI32), write a driver for the WiFi card in the OLPC. I think this card is USB, and USB is not really working on SqueakNOS, so USB is needed first. In any case, before even starting, we need to collect information on the API for the WiFi card, and that won't be easy, although the Forth sources for OpenFirmware should have all and every information needed (as well as the Linux sources for the Linux in the OLPC... I guess). Just collecting and understanding the needed information is a huge task, and something very valuable if anybody wants to do it.
3. Work on using OpenFirmware's services (callout API) to access the WiFi card (and maybe TCP/IP). I've been working on this API, and we already have a start on this front, but some details have to be solved before it can be really used (that's the thread titled "ColaNOS" on this same list). After polishing this details, we'll have to learn to use this callout API, and that's also a space where somebody could start collecting information.
Ok, gotta run now... but as you can see, I have a picture on different things that could be done, if anybody wants to jump in to help, I will help help :)
richie