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Bug#524787: marked as done (ITP: unicorn -- Drivers and applications for the Bewan ADSL PCI ST and USB modems)

Your message dated Wed, 8 Sep 2010 13:29:40 +0100
with message-id <20100908122940.GA25488@leverton.org>
and subject line Withdrawing ITP for unicorn -- Drivers and applications for the Bewan ADSL PCI ST and USB modems
has caused the Debian Bug report #524787,
regarding ITP: unicorn -- Drivers and applications for the Bewan ADSL PCI ST and USB modems
to be marked as done.

This means that you claim that the problem has been dealt with.
If this is not the case it is now your responsibility to reopen the
Bug report if necessary, and/or fix the problem forthwith.

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-- 
524787: http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=524787
Debian Bug Tracking System
Contact owner@bugs.debian.org with problems
--- Begin Message --- 
Package: wnpp
Severity: wishlist
Owner: Nick Leverton <nick@leverton.org>

This is really an ITA for the existing unicorn and unicorn-source packages
which were somewhat precipitately removed from Debian two weeks ago.

* Package name    : unicorn
  Version         : 0.9.3
  Upstream Author : Frode Isaksen <fisaksen@bewan.com>
* URL             : http://www.bewan.com
* License         : GPL and Proprietary
  Programming Lang: C
  Description     : Kernel drivers and applications for the Bewan ADSL PCI ST and USB modems

Unicorn package provides the source code for the unicorn kernel modules
and applications that can be useful to monitor the state of the Bewan
ADSL modems.

--- End Message ---
--- Begin Message --- 
When I raised this ITP, Unicorn and some Conexant card were to my
knowledge still the only readily available plug-in-and-go ADSL PCI
cards with Linux drivers, even despite both cards' age, both vendors'
closed source components, and both cards being limited to 8Mbit/sec.

Since then, much has changed:
* ADSL2+ and ADSL speeds > 8Mbit are becoming common
* The Pulsar ADSL2 card has, AIUI, fully open source drivers
* There is at least one PCI ADSL2+ card which bypasses the need for
  specialist DSL drivers (the Viking PCI ADSL - rtl8139 compatible)
  and other products in the pipeline (Solos, Geos are names I've seen).
* For most requirements, external ADSL2+ modems running embedded Linux
  with RFC1483 bridging (my own need) and other advanced features have
  come down from 70-odd quid to, the time of writing, 15 GBP.

Although the Bewan drivers have been pretty reliable, I have never been
fully confident of their stability as I could not check the source code.

I have recently had cause to run my Unicorn in a relatively fast machine
(AMD XP3000+) and it seems that at these speeds, ATM packets can be sent
out of order by the closed source layer.  Since I can neither investigate
easily, nor fix it by porting the drivers to use the existing Linux ATM
layer and other kernel facilities, and since dedicated modems are now
so cheap, I regret that it's not worth my while investing any more time
on these drivers.

I'm hence withdrawing this ITP.  If anyone is interested in
taking them further, my current work-in-progress is dgettable from
http://debian.leverton.org/dists/lenny/main/source/unicorn_0.9.3-3~0WIP.1.dsc
These drivers build and (mostly) work under 2.6.32 with module-assistant
and, had they been reliable, should have met Policy for Squeeze too.

Nick

--- End Message ---
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