[NTLUG:Discuss] device driver info

[don]

Cool, thanks for the heads up.  I was at the meeting when you and your
son demo'd the game you are writing - very impressive.  I was going to
use that graphics library as the basis for the game.  

 I'm going to do this in my spare time, so by the time it actually gets
anywhere, "Little E" will probably won his third WC championship.....

Steve Baker wrote:
> 
> dsnedigar at chamberlaingroup.com wrote:
> >
> > Does anyone have any good, basic info on how to write a device driver under
> > Linux ?  I've got the O'Reily book but its a bit over my head right now since
> > I'm just starting out.   If it helps, I'm wanting to write a device driver for a
> > steering wheel type 'joystick' for lack of a better term.  I want to eventually
> > write a NASCAR type game under Linux, and I thought that being able to read the
> > steering wheel would be a good place to start.   Any ideas ?
> 
> If the steering wheel is an analog device that plugs into the regular
> joystick port then you won't need to resort to a device driver.  It'll
> just look like a regular analog joystick.
> 
> If it's a digital device, then you are probably in trouble because the
> digital game port interface protocol is 'owned' by Microsoft - and they
> aren't revealing the necessary low-level protocols you'd need to write
> a driver (which is why there isn't a digital stick driver right
> now - AFAIK).
> 
> If you are thinking about using one of the Nintendo or Playstation
> steering wheels with a hacked connector - there is information on
> how to do that and again, the standard Linux joystick driver can cope.
> 
> My 'PLIB' library (http://plib.sourceforge.net) has a convenient C++
> header file that hides all the ugliness of interfacing - there is also
> a handy test program that lets you see what joystick ports wiggle as
> you play with the stick - and also which buttons do what things.
> 
> Several Linux distro's already package PLIB - so it's perfectly
> possible that you already have it installed on your machine.
> Check either /usr/include/plib/js.h or /usr/local/plib/include/js.h
> 
> Anyway, email me offline if you need help with that.
> 
> --
> Steve Baker                  http://web2.airmail.net/sjbaker1
> sjbaker1 at airmail.net (home)  http://www.woodsoup.org/~sbaker
> sjbaker at hti.com      (work)
> 
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