libertas 8388 firmware

[Dan Williams]

On Sat, 2010-10-30 at 13:27 +0100, Daniel Drake wrote:
> On 29 October 2010 20:53, Dan Williams <dcbw at redhat.com> wrote:
> > It uses the v9 firmware API like the sd8688, and obviously does not have
> > the OLPC mesh capability.  Unfortunately Marvell does not publish
> > comprehensive changelogs even on their Extranet, so all I've got is the
> > changelog from the previous firmware release, which isn't very
> > enlightening :(
> 
> OK, thanks. So we'll stay on v5 for now.
> 
> The v5 in the repo is version 5.43.7p0
> but the one shipped by Fedora and OLPC is 5.110.22.p23
> 
> Is the 5.110 version newer? Do you have any info/changelogs/release
> dates for 5.43?

Um, sort of.  Remember that the OLPC mesh firmware is/was developed by
CozyBit, not really Marvell.  It has a different versioning scheme.  The
OLPC firmware is "special" and is not general purpose.  Obviously OLPC
is the largest user of the usb8388, so perhaps we need special treatment
here.

I chose *not* to include OLPC mesh-enabled firmware in the
linux-firmware repo because at least historically the firmware was
frequently updated, and I'm no longer plugged in enough with the OLPC
wifi firmware process to push updates to linux-firmware.  However, if
somebody from OLPC wanted to do that, I doubt there would be a problem.

All you need to do is clone linux-firmware, make your changes, and send
a pull request to Woodhouse.

> OLPC's 5.110 version was released 11/20/2008, available from here:
> http://dev.laptop.org/pub/firmware/libertas/
> Changelog:
> http://dev.laptop.org/pub/firmware/libertas/RELEASE_NOTES
> 
> The version scheme seems very unintuitive. 5.110 is newer than 5.220.
> Who knows where 5.43 fits in.

CozyBit used 220 as a "dev" branch, while 110 was the "stable" branch as
I recall.  The version numbers are unrelated to any of the Marvell
releases.  You'd have to ask CozyBit what Marvell version the 5.110
firmware is based off of.  I also know they cherry-picked certain
changes into the 5.110/5.220 firmware from Marvell firmware.  Basically,
think of the OLPC firmware as completely different firmware that happens
to run on the same hardware.

Dan