Driver for AMD Lance network card clone

[Jakub Jermář]

Implement a native HelenOS driver for one or more clones of the AMD Lance network interface card.

Details

The new driver should be realized as a module which plugs itself into the HelenOS networking stack and implements the network interface card interface in the AMD Lance specific way.

There appears to be several clones of AMD Lance (a.k.a. Am79C90), The driver should be implemented with this in mind to provide support for the widest range of Am79C90 clones.

What Gains and Benefits will this bring?

The only NIC driver that HelenOS supports so far is a clone of NE2000. Some important virtual environments in which HelenOS is commonly run, such as VirtualBox, unfortunately do not emulate NE2000. On these systems, HelenOS cannot fully exploit its brand new networking stack.

Difficulty

It appears that the AMD Lance driver will need to do DMA. Since HelenOS does not provide abstractions for doing DMA yet, it will need to be implemented along with this ticket. This increases the difficulty from medium to something between medium and difficult.

Required skills

A successful applicant will have good skills of programming in the C language and the ability to learn and use HelenOS specific I/O functions. A successful applicant should have a fair understanding of the workings of the networking stack too.

Documentation

• ​Networking and TCP/IP stack for HelenOS system
• DeveloperDocs
• ​Networking stack Reference Manual

Possible mentors

HelenOS Core Team, Jakub Jermar, Martin Decky, Lukas Mejdrech, Jiri Svoboda