universeII 1.0 in preparation - searching for test support
Nov 11 2009
The first version in the new 1.x tree is currently in its final stage
and I'm looking urgently for volunteers to support testing.
If you are interested please feel free to contact me via
email (see Contact on the left side).
universeII 0.94 released
Jan 16 2008
After a longer time of no new release, version 0.94 of the universeII package is out.
Apart from a small set of changes the main difference to 0.93 is the fact that support
for 2.4 kernels is discontinued. The 2.4 driver within this release
is the source code from 0.93. Due to no feedback and no requests from the users to
continue the 2.4 tree, support for 2.4 will completely be removed in the next release.
A short overview of the changes:
waitIrq() can now be called with a timeout parameter.
Overlapping of images is now enabled per default.
Added a small number of parameter and state checks.
Version 0.94 in preparation
Oct 03 2006
A new version of the universeII package is currently in its final stage.
Therefore extensive testing will be started within the next weeks. If you
are interested in supporting these test (especially testers for PowerPC
and/or 64Bit machines are needed) please feel free to contact me via
email (see Contact on the left side).
universeII 0.93 released
Jan 26 2006
A new version of the universeII package has been released today
including additional functionality but also some smaller bug fixes.
Reported problems with newer 2.6.x kernel version have been solved
and the actual release is fully tested on 2.6.8, 2.6.11.4, 2.6.14.3 and
2.6.15.
A more detailed list of changes:
Changed major number from 70 to 221 to be in accordance with Linux
device numbering scheme. Delete old device entries and call
make devices from driver directory when updating a
previous version!
Added functionality to generate VME interrupts via software (see doc).
Improved functionality of function "there".
Changed handling of internal PCI addresses for images mapping. Image
size is now only limited by 32-Bit border and available I/O memory.
Changed handling of bus addresses for compatibility with 64-bit systems.
Added some module parameters and two new statistics to /proc output.
Fixed problem with 2.6.11 and higher kernel versions.
Removed bug in DMA linked list operation.
Added and changed some spinlocks to guarantee full concurrency.
General code cleanup including change of some variable names and types.
Added generation of vmelib as a shared library.
Small change in directory structure.
Note: Since development of two different trees requires a lot of
extra load, this release will be the last one with support of the 2.4.x kernel.
Problems with kernel version 2.6.11 and higher
Sep 28 2005
The actual driver (version 0.92) works without problems up to kernel version 2.6.9
but problems have been reported with 2.6.11 and higher.These problems will be solved
in the upcoming 0.93 release.
Therefore it is recommended to use the universeII driver only with kernel versions up
to 2.6.9 until the new version is released.
universeII 0.92 released
Apr 04 2005
After a longer test phase, a new version of the universeII package
has been released today. Apart from minor bug fixes the most important
features of this version are support for the 2.6.x kernel and
extended VME bus error handling.
A more detailed list of changes:
Kernel 2.6.x support.
Extended VME bus error handling (EXPERIMENTAL).
Removed bug which prevented allocation of master image no. eight.
Removed bug in DMA write function when dealing with multiple buffers.
Removed bug in cleanup_module which could lead to a kernel Oops.
Timer for mailbox handling now initialized correctly.
Added different spinlocks.
Removing of /proc entry corrected.
Minor cleanup and restructure of source code.
Added several range checks.
Driver and Interface Code Walkthrough.
Rework of Documentation.
Unfortunately a bug in early versions of the 2.6.x kernel (which is now fixed)
lead to a change of parameters passing to the simple read and write functions
(rl, wl, rw, ww, rb, wb). Therefore the interface to the driver (vmelib.cpp)
has been adapted accordingly but can not be used together with earlier driver
version anymore. Furthermore all applications have to be linked to the new vmelib
when using the new driver. Other functions of the vmelib library are not affected.
Kernel 2.6.x support
July 30 2004
A new driver version for 2.6.x kernel is currently under testing
and will be available soon. If you would like to test this
driver, please contact me via email.
