On Wed, Jan 20, 2010 at 05:52:52PM -0800, James Hozier wrote: > With every single laptop I've bought/been given over the years, I > was able to run OpenBSD on them almost flawlessly save a few > quick/simple hacks to make anything that didn't work, work. > > The one main issue I've had with ALL of them was the wireless > card...maybe I was just unlucky to have gotten ones with crappy > chipsets (like this Broadcom I have now which is totally useless... > I want to stomp on it real badly) but nonetheless it pisses me off. > > I want to try and help solve my own problems as well as for the OBSD > community who might also have this particular issue, so I'm looking > to research on how to reverse engineer these things and write drivers > for them. > > I know it's not easy, even though I don't understand how hard it is > because I've never done it before, but I do hear that if there's a > hell, it's a place where people are sent to do this for eternity. > > So with that reference in mind, would anyone experienced care to point > me in some correct direction? (Which texts to read, which programming > language(s) to focus on, etc.)
- C - any intro/boot to x86 assembly; to get the basics - intel cpu pdfs - ida pro / ollydbg - something on computer architecture. - windows ddk to get an idea how drivers work on windows, possibly book on same topic. - BSD basics (McKusick, Bach, etc) + whatever you can get your hands on - Device is connected via a BUS to CPU -> docs. - IEEE standards - any other docs. - more of the same - Read lots of code. - supertanker sized amounts of experience - ability to research stuff yourself, without asking on a ml - etc Your question is naive. If you were up to it, you wouldn't have to ask the equivalent of "How do I become an awesome hacker?". Writing this up was and is a waste of time, it will never happen.
