Hi,
I just found this list after being pointed to it after my name
came up on it :)
I am the author of the Linux usb-serial driver. I have hacked
on initial support for the Handspring Visor with help from
Miles Lott.
So, questions:
How would you add support for the USB connection under Linux?
Currently the only time the Visor base station even looks like
a USB device is when a host link is requested from the Visor.
So suddenly the device shows up to the host computer, my driver
sees it, and assigns it to a device node, and away you go.
Any ideas about how to do this differently?
In looking at the handspringheaders.exe, I don't see a usbserial.h
file in there, only a UsbMgr.h file. It looks like, from the PC side,
that the USB connection can be one of two "endpoints". This matches
up with the actual USB descriptors which contain 2 bulk in and 2 bulk
out endpoints, essentially tying them together to form 2 "sockets"
to talk to the device.
But is there any software out there that actually uses the second
"endpoint"? It doesn't seem that this would work with the serial
connection.
So currently my driver only sets up one connection, making it look
like a serial port to the application side of things.
I also emailed Handspring a number of weeks ago and never got
a response. Another Linux user also did, and got the response that
they haven't got any written documentation on the USB interface,
but when they did, they would release it. Since it seems that
they are very busy, I'm not holding my breath waiting...
Comments? Suggestions?
I would love to get the USB interface to work on Linux (yes USB is
working on Linux currently, check out the 2.3.x series of kernels,
or the back port to 2.2.13 that was done in the latest SUSE 6.3
release).
greg k-h
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
----- Forwarded message from Miles Lott <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> -----
Date: Thu, 30 Dec 1999 13:55:13 -0600 (CST)
To: Greg KH <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: [Pilot-Unix] pilot-link to support USB?
On Thu, 30 Dec 1999, Ken Hornstein wrote:
> >The author of the usb-serial driver in the current linux devel kernel
> >is working on USB Visor support this week actually.
> >The plan is to provide a serial port through which pilot-link, et al
> >can communicate. Hopefully that will be enough.
>
> Hmph, I personally wouldn't have done it that way (for one thing,
> the device doesn't even exist until you hit the sync button, so it
> makes it hard to run pilot-xfer first). My idea was to simply use
> the NetBSD generic USB device and leave the changes in userland space.
I suppose that could make for a clunky solution if it actually worked
that way. So far I am seeing that it is possible to bind the driver
to a port then run pilot-link. But I know what you mean...
If you have any insight into how the Visor works, perhaps you can share it
with Greg ([EMAIL PROTECTED]).
> >Reading the usbserial.h (sic) file from the handspringheaders.exe
> >file from their site, it may be that certain combinations may be
> >required depending on the function desired.
>
> I can't unencode that without a PC, unfortunately :-(
>
> >Let's hope that A) Handspring answers my email or B) Greg manages
> >to back-engineer it in spite of them.
>
> I'd be interested in hearing what he found out.
>
> --Ken
>
----- End forwarded message -----
