wifi driver under MOL

[Derrik Pates]

Basile STARYNKEVITCH wrote:
> I dont understand fully how Mac Over Linux works w.r.t. MacOSX kernel
> code (running in "supervisor" mode, at the processor level), in
> particular accessing IO devices.
> 
> I would guess that each supervisor machine instruction is simulated by
> the MOL linux kernel module.

No, the PowerPC is a fully virtualizable ISA/processor design, which 
means you can run a full virtual machine within a process context - with 
all the instructions that go along with it. Virtualization of this kind 
on x86, however, does require that - which is why software like VMware 
for x86 is significantly more complex, and probably much more 
time-consuming, to develop.

> This brings me to my main question, is it (or would it be possible) to
> run the MaCOSX Aiport2 driver for the Wifi 802.11G broadcom chip
> inside my new PowerBook (12", 1.33GHz)?

No. It doesn't have access to "real" physical address space directly. It 
would be pretty complex to do (IMO) for any PCI device that uses an 
interrupt. Mapping in the address ranges for the device wouldn't be so 
difficult, but handling the interrupt for the device would be.

> Could I realisticaly hack the MOL kernel code to make it possible?

Maybe. I'd say it's a big maybe, and it'd be a really ugly hack, I 
think. I suppose it depends on your programming experience.

--
Derrik Pates
dpates@dsdk12.net