[pvrusb2] Completely new fwextract.pl coming...

[Mike Isely]

On Sat, 7 Nov 2009, Mike Isely wrote:

> 
> All:
> 
> Just thought I'd drop a note that I'm preparing a rewritten 
> fwextract.pl.  New features include:
> 

   [...]


> 
> * Self-training - I have an idea in mind that should make it possible to 
> train fwextract.pl on new driver packages withOUT the need for the 
> firmware to be manually extracted first.  This trick will only work if 
> the firmware data hasn't changed (which is frequently the case).  If new 
> firmware data has been embedded, a manual extraction is still needed to 
> provide the search samples for the training process.  This trick will 
> work by using the internal database basically as the search set.

This last feature is implemented now and it works!  **Provided** that 
the target firmware data itself hasn't changed (this is frequently the 
case), it is possible now to train fwextract.pl on a new driver package 
without having to do any of the tedious manual extraction!  Not only is 
this really cool to see, but it is even faster now!  This works because 
fwextract.pl can now use its own internal database of already known 
firmware images when searching for firmware in new previously unknown 
driver packages.  And through the use of Perl hash variables, it is able 
to simultaneously search for all possible firmware images with just a 
single pass through each candidate file.  Whee!!

   [...]


> 
> I'm still doing a bunch of tweaks and fixes.  All but the last have been 
> implemented and already work.  Hopefully tomorrow I can make this 
> available.  I'd appreciate it if people here could then play with it and 
> let me know of any problems.  The net effect of all this is that 
> fwextract.pl should be even smarter now and for the common cases it 
> should be even easier.

Sorry I didn't get this out last Sunday like I had hoped.  I had gotten 
pulled away from this and could not get back to it until now.  I'm going 
to test it a bit more here and then put up the new fwextract.pl shortly 
afterwards.  Probably another day.  It's getting really close.

  -Mike


-- 

Mike Isely
isely @ isely (dot) net
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