PCI card project. How to write a driver ?

[sbayeta]

Hi,

This is my first quiestion to this forum, so please tell me if I should post anywhere else.

I need to develop a data adquisition board to perform digital image processing. The project will use a CCD camera, taking pictures at very precise intervals, so I was thinking in making a PCI card and connect it to the PCI bus of a dedicated PC.

I need a VERY fast connection to the PC, as I'll be taking a lot of pictures per second, and I need to perform a lot of calculations between pictures.

I'm pretty experienced working with microcontrollers (using assembler and C), and I'm also comfortable programming C/C++ and JAVA for PCs. Although I'm not very good with LINUX.

Can anyone tell me if this is even posible ? How can I program a PCI driver and use interrupts ? Is there a better way given the characteristics I need ?

I'm thinking in developing this project under LINUX because I'm guessing it may be easier to find information and examples on how to write PCI drivers than in Windows. Also, the project will be used continuosly in an industrie, so I guess Windows is not the best choice.

Thanks in advance

[cloverm]

Hello,

Hmm, I don't think that any of us here is really an expert on this (hopefully somebody is going to prove me wrong) subject. However I suggest you start with reading this book:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg...25508?v=glance

Techniques for writing hardware device drivers that run under Linux kernels 2.0.x through 2.2.x. Sections show how to manage memory, time, interrupts, ports, and other details of the hardware-software interface.

Sounds like exactly what you're looking for.

[sbayeta]

[quote author=cloverm link=board=9;threadid=8274;start=0#msg75033 date=1070995158]
Hello,

Hmm, I don't think that any of us here is really an expert on this (hopefully somebody is going to prove me wrong) subject. However I suggest you start with reading this book:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg...25508?v=glance

Techniques for writing hardware device drivers that run under Linux kernels 2.0.x through 2.2.x. Sections show how to manage memory, time, interrupts, ports, and other details of the hardware-software interface.

Sounds like exactly what you're looking for.


[/quote]

Thanks for the immediate reply.!!

I'll try to get the book

Cheers

[ph34r]

I've seen a few howtos, etc. about writing drivers for PCI network cards... I'll check my various collections of bookmarks and repost if I find anything.

[ph34r]

From a posting on the Kernel devl list...

A Linux PCI HOW-TO file is at http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/PCI-HOWTO.html.
General Linux PCI driver info is in /usr/src/linux*/Documentation/pci.txt.
See also /usr/src/linux*/Documentation/devices.txt. That's a start.

[sbayeta]

[quote author=ph34r link=board=9;threadid=8274;start=0#msg75068 date=1071064688]
From a posting on the Kernel devl list...

A Linux PCI HOW-TO file is at http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/PCI-HOWTO.html.
General Linux PCI driver info is in /usr/src/linux*/Documentation/pci.txt.
See also /usr/src/linux*/Documentation/devices.txt. That's a start.

[/quote]

Thanks a lot for the reply. That is a very useful link

lwn.net has some tutorials for the new module framework in kernel 2.6 you might want to read those as well.