RE: FPGA for PCI based servo control board

["Bert Pirson" <hpirson-at-buffalo.veridian.com>]

> 
> >> The more serious problem is the NIC driver in the
> >> PC.  Linux provides a whole bunch of NIC drivers,
> >> for many different cards.  AFAIK, they are _not_
> >> usable by a real-time task running under RTLinux
> >> or RTAL.  Can somebody who knows the EMC architecture
> >> either confirm this, or set me straight?
> >
> > Yup, that is true.  You'd have to go in at the hardware
> > level, with a custom driver that will run in RT.  This
> > might not be so hard, but you'd need a different version
> > for each chipset.  Not an attractive thought.
> 
> Nope, not attractive at all.  As far as I am concerned,
> that just about kills the ethernet version,  unless
> somebody steps forward and volunteers to write real
> time raw packet drivers for a couple dozen of the most
> common NICs. :-(
> 
> Actually, I wonder if the source for the normal,
> non-realtime drivers would contain most of the
> hardware level details.  I know absolutely nothing
> about how those drivers are structured, but perhaps
> real-time drivers could use large chunks of the
> existing code?
> 

Four or five years ago I used to follow the RTLinux mail list.  There
were several people developing RTLinux real-time Ethernet drivers, I
think for use in multi-track audio recording systems.  

A Google search on "RTLinux Ethernet" yields many hits.

Bert