Thursday, April 19th, 2007 by Marcin Juszkiewicz
Today I got few USB gadgets:
- Ethernet card (Damicom 9601 based)
- RS232 cable
- multi-port card-reader with USB 2.0 hub integrated (powered)
So during restructure of my USB network I tried to connect all my USB devices to desktop. With two external hubs I got out of ports…
Effect:
12:00 hrw@home:~$ lsusb
Bus 001 Device 055: ID 0a46:9601 Davicom Semiconductor, Inc.
Bus 001 Device 054: ID 058f:6362 Alcor Micro Corp.
Bus 001 Device 053: ID 0fce:d016 Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications AB
Bus 001 Device 036: ID 058f:6254 Alcor Micro Corp.
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 0000:0000
Bus 003 Device 059: ID 0525:a4a2 Netchip Technology, Inc. Linux-USB Ethernet/RNDIS Gadget
Bus 003 Device 058: ID 0424:223a Standard Microsystems Corp. 8-in-1 Card Reader
Bus 003 Device 057: ID 1457:5122
Bus 003 Device 056: ID 0421:0431 Nokia Mobile Phones
Bus 003 Device 055: ID 058f:9254 Alcor Micro Corp. Hub
Bus 003 Device 053: ID 04bf:0319 TDK Corp.
Bus 003 Device 046: ID 0a81:0205 Chesen Electronics Corp. PS/2 Keyboard+Mouse Adapter
Bus 003 Device 001: ID 0000:0000
Bus 002 Device 011: ID 04b8:082f Seiko Epson Corp.
Bus 002 Device 010: ID 046d:c70a Logitech, Inc.
Bus 002 Device 009: ID 046d:c70e Logitech, Inc.
Bus 002 Device 008: ID 046d:0b02 Logitech, Inc.
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 0000:0000
The list contain:
- USB Cup heater with integrated USB 1.1 Hub
- Nokia 770
- Sharp Zaurus C760
- FIC Neo1973
- Davicom Ethernet card
- EPSON Stylus DX3800
- TDK Bluetooth 1.1 dongle
- Logitech Bluetooth 2.0 EDR dongle
- PS/2 -> USB converter with optical mouse connected
- Hama multi-port card reader
- no-name multi-port card reader
- no-name multi-port card reader with integrated USB 2.0 Hub
- Sony Ericsson k750i phone
As result I got:
- 14 usb-storage devices
- 3 serial ports
- 3 network interfaces
- 3 input devices (Logitech Bluetooth need to be switched from HID to HCI)
And everything was working, needed /dev/ entries were created and HAL managed to show me proper tree with all devices. Both hubs were powered during test.
Now I disconnected most of them and left only needed ones.
Tags: bluetooth computers linux nokia openmoko phone serial zaurus 4 Comments »
Thursday, March 22nd, 2007 by Marcin Juszkiewicz
Today I finished storage upgrade of my box. Before I had only PATA devices. Recently I bought Serial ATA II hard drive so my config was (2.6.21-rc3 kernel with libata for all SATA/PATA devices):
ata1.00: ATA-6: ST3120026A, 3.06, max UDMA/100
ata1.00: 234441648 sectors, multi 16: LBA48
ata1.00: configured for UDMA/100
scsi 0:0:0:0: Direct-Access ATA ST3120026A 3.06 PQ: 0 ANSI: 5
SCSI device sda: 234441648 512-byte hdwr sectors (120034 MB)
scsi 1:0:0:0: CD-ROM TOSHIBA DVD-ROM SD-M1212 1R22 PQ: 0 ANSI: 5
sr0: scsi3-mmc drive: 32x/32x cd/rw xa/form2 cdda tray
scsi 1:0:1:0: CD-ROM TEAC CD-W516EB 1.0K PQ: 0 ANSI: 5
sr1: scsi3-mmc drive: 40x/40x writer cd/rw xa/form2 cdda tray
ata5.00: ATA-7: ST3320620NS, 3.AEG, max UDMA/133
ata5.00: 625142448 sectors, multi 16: LBA48 NCQ (depth 0/32)
ata5.00: configured for UDMA/100
scsi 5:0:0:0: Direct-Access ATA ST3320620NS 3.AE PQ: 0 ANSI: 5
SCSI device sdb: 625142448 512-byte hdwr sectors (320073 MB)
PATA bus contain: Seagate 120GB hdd which I bought in 2003, then 9 years old Toshiba DVD drive and 6 years old Teac CD writer. Then SATA Seagate 320GB hdd which I bought one week ago and configured as LVM (some parts of 120GB will be added into it).
Today I took out old PATA optical drives and replaced them with Samsung SH-S183A DVD writer (Serial ATA). Now bus look a bit different:
ata1.00: ATA-6: ST3120026A, 3.06, max UDMA/100
ata1.00: 234441648 sectors, multi 16: LBA48
ata1.00: configured for UDMA/100
scsi 0:0:0:0: Direct-Access ATA ST3120026A 3.06 PQ: 0 ANSI: 5
SCSI device sda: 234441648 512-byte hdwr sectors (120034 MB)
ata5.00: ATA-7: ST3320620NS, 3.AEG, max UDMA/133
ata5.00: 625142448 sectors, multi 16: LBA48 NCQ (depth 0/32)
ata5.00: configured for UDMA/100
scsi 5:0:0:0: Direct-Access ATA ST3320620NS 3.AE PQ: 0 ANSI: 5
SCSI device sdb: 625142448 512-byte hdwr sectors (320073 MB)
scsi 6:0:0:0: CD-ROM TSSTcorp CD/DVDW SH-S183A SB02 PQ: 0 ANSI: 5
sr0: scsi3-mmc drive: 94x/94x writer dvd-ram cd/rw xa/form2 cdda tray
That “94x writer” looks funny as this is 18xDVD writer. And I must say that due to switch to libata in Linux there are no problems with handling Serial ATA devices (nevermind hdd or atapi ones).
Tags: computers serial ata Comments Off
Wednesday, February 21st, 2007 by Marcin Juszkiewicz
Today I switched to new desk. It is a bit smaller and lower then old one but as it has other orientation I was able to configure it better. Currently on desk I have:
- Progear webpad + USB keyboard
- Logitech X-230 speakers
- small lamp
- 20″ wide LCD monitor
- 3 palmtops (under monitor)
- wireless phone (with cradle)
- cup heater with integrated USB 1.1 hub
- 4 slot card reader
- lollipop with “Kocham Cię” (”I love you” in Polish) which I got from Ania some time ago
- Microsoft Natural ergonomic keyboard
- mouse (with mousepad)
But I feel that this desk is better then old one was. I got rid of printer from it and have better access to Progear.
BTW — do not try to look under desk — too many cables…
Tags: computers progear 2 Comments »
Tuesday, February 20th, 2007 by Marcin Juszkiewicz
Today I read post on LinuxNews (Polish language) about state of drivers for graphic cards. There are closed source propertiary drivers which works and give 3D acceleration and there are free drivers which cover some cards and provide kind of 3D acceleration for subset of them. The result is that user have to choose:
- closed, propertiary driver which can contain security problems but gives working 2D, 3D
- free driver which works in 2D but rather not in 3D
Similar problem exists with WiFi support. CompactFlash cards are now hard to get because good, working ones (Prism2/3 based for example) are not RoHS friendly so no one want to manufacture or sell them. Instead there are new cards which base on new chipsets with no drivers or pay us to get source which you can not share licensed ones.
USB dongles are in better situation as there exists few good supported chipsets:
- Zydas (mainline kernel and also external one)
- Ralink (external free one and also vendor provided one)
- Prism2 (working, shitty one)
For a start let we forget that Prism2 exists in USB version (it does not support WPA, code is very low quality, will never merge into mainline kernel). Zydas and Ralink supports also 802.11g and are available from many vendors, have working drivers, firmware is available. As usual user has to triple check does this is version with blue sticker and not with red one because red ones use other chipset which is not supported.
There are also dongles with Marvell 8388 or 8338 chipset — first ones are supported by libertas driver done for OLPC, second one are not supported yet. BTW — this driver will also support 8385 chipset used in some CompactFlash cards.
And USB versions has other problem… they require +5V which is not present in many embedded devices. 3.3V, 2.5V, 2.0V and even 1.8V or less are common values for that kind of hardware. I know companies which solved it by rebuilding existing USB devices to work with 3.3V (many WiFi dongles use that voltage and have proper regulator on board to change +5V into +3.3V) — this way they can lower price and complication of device by not using extra regulators. This also improves power life. But you have to remember which dongles are changed to not plug them into PC — if you forgot then they get burnt after insert.
When few years ago I was buying my first PC I selected all components to be 100% sure that all will works under Linux. Those years passed but you still need to be careful when you buy new hardware ;(
Tags: computers free drivers wlan wlan-ng wpa Comments Off
Friday, January 19th, 2007 by Marcin Juszkiewicz
Today there was a sale in local MediaMarkt. I decided to go there to look how much it was destroyed by wild crowd.
When I was at the shop there were only a bit more people then usual — no signs of wild crowd, no destroyed stuff.. But they had one nice thing (which was also one of reasons why I was there): Samsung 205B Wide LCD monitor for 999 PLN (about 260 EUR) and I bought one.
At home I replaced my Samsung 17″ CRT with this new 20″ widescreen LCD and booted. 1280×1024 (my usual resolution) was not so good and after edition of xorg.conf I got 1680×1050 resolution and this is it. More space for windows, more space during reading of documents etc.
And all of that without any problems with gfx card — I use ATI x200 integrated into mainboard chipset and closed fglrx driver (did not checked does opensource driver support this resolution but I think that it should).
Tags: computers lcd 3 Comments »
Tuesday, November 7th, 2006 by Marcin Juszkiewicz
During building my current home PC I decided to get rid of FDD and disabled it in BIOS, did not connect cable and power into drive (which is still in computer case due my laziness). But how to upgrade BIOS without floppy?
There are some solutions:
Create floppy image and burn it to CD
Create floppy image and use MEMDISK
Where to get floppy image? Good one is FreeDOS fdboot.img — mount it via loop, remove directories, put flasher and bios image, umount. Then time for another step.
If you want to go CD way, you need to start CD writing program (I used K3b) and use you floppy image as bootable image. No need for any other files — you only flash 1.4M. Then boot computer from CD, select ‘Safe Mode’ in FreeDOS and run flasher.
Memdisk way is a bit simpler. You need to download syslinux package from your distro or built it (I used Debian package). Then you have to find memdisk binary (/usr/share/syslinux/ in Debian) and copy it to /boot/. Then copy floppy image into same directory. Next step is configuration of boot loader (I use GRUB). Add new entry with memdisk as kernel and floppy image as initrd. Then reboot, selecting proper entry from list and select ‘Safe Mode’ in FreeDOS and run flasher.
Small modification of second step can be skip of configuration editing and usage of GRUB shell to do same.
I hope that someone will find that howto useful.
UPDATE: in some places I found informations that memdisk is not good way to reflash BIOS — some flashers refuse to work or breaks.
Tags: bios computers Comments Off