Handspring-Visor mini-HOWTO
Ryan VanderBijl
v0.3, April 7, 2000
Using the Visor with Linux and your USB port
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Table of Contents
1. Introduction
1.1 About this Document
1.2 Disclaimer
1.3 History
1.4 Copyright
2. Installing Stuff
2.1 Requirements
2.2 Getting your kernel to support USB
2.3 Installing pilot link
2.4 Almost Done! (aka testing)
3. References
______________________________________________________________________
1. Introduction
1.1. About this Document
This document was first created by Ryan VanderBijl, April 6, 2:00am.
It has been edited by Miles Lott. I recieved my Handvisor today, and
have struggled getting it to work, and found no good HOWTO yet, so
thought i'd make one. By some random mutation, you might be able to
find a new version on my web page, but that is up to chance. Test your
luck at:
http://www.calvin.edu/~rvbijl39/
or
http://usbvisor.sourceforge.net
I used the vi editor. Anything else would have been evil. No spell
check has yet been run on this document. So, if you have a problem
with my spellling, tuff luck.
1.2. Disclaimer
Hmm... what did I claim? Oh well. I am really a newbie at this
usb/visor stuff, so i really couldn't answer to many of your
questions. There are people who could help you much better, who
maintain the sites I refer to at the end of the document. However,
feel free to send me questions, or updates to this document. My email
address is: rvbijl39@calvin.edu
1.3. History
v0.1 - initial release
v0.2 - HTML-ized version
v0.3 - SGML-ized, Added modifications by Miles Lott
1.4. Copyright
This document is Copyright 2000, by Ryan VanderBijl. You may
distribute freely under the terms of the GPL (www.gnu.org).
2. Installing Stuff
2.1. Requirements
Some obvious things are required, such as a computer, USB ports, hand
visor (and USB cradle), Linux, etc. You also should know how to
compile stuff, like the kernel.
Most critical is determining which type of USB host controller you
have. Intel chipset motherboards, i.e. the BX chipset, are typically
UHCI controllers. Most addon cards are OHCI controllers. You could try
cat /proc/pci
or use
lspci -vv
and look for your controller in there. It should say which type you
have. You should refer to http://www.linux-usb.org for further details. The kernel documentation in the
directory (Documentation/usb/usb.txt) may also be helpful.
Now lets see... working USB support was first introduced in the Linux
Development Kernels, around v2.3.40. The latest version, of this
writing was v2.3.99pre3. I tried briefly, but that broke a number of
things on my system, and I was too lazy to fix them. SO. What I did
instead was to get 'The v2.2 Linux USB drivers backport'. This is
available from http://www.linux-usb.org
http://www.suse.cz/development/usb-
backport/usb-2.3.50-1-for-2.2.14.diff.gz
So, the bear minimum kernel version is 2.2.14, which is what I'm
using. And it works. Check for the latest backport patch if still
available or relevant when you are reading this. If kernel version
2.4 is out, use that kernel, otherwise use the latest backport patch.
2.2. Getting your kernel to support USB
To install the USB backport, you can do something like this: (cut and
paste from:http://www.suse.cz/development/usb-backport/)
cd /usr/src
tar xzvf linux-2.2.14.tar.gz
cd linux
gzip -dc ../usb-2.3.50-1-for-2.2.14.diff.gz | patch -p1
make distclean
Configure, and then make your kernel. Make sure to enable:
USB support (CONFIG_USB),
the appropriate controller - UHCI, alternate UNCI, or OHCI
(CONFIG_USB_UHCI, CONFIG_USB_UHCI_ALT, or CONFIG_USB_OHCI)
USB Serial Converter support (CONFIG_USB_SERIAL)
USB Handspring Visor Driver (CONFIG_USB_SERIAL_VISOR) (serial
converter's sub-option)
I compiled these into the kernel, but as modules should work. The
developer(s) prefer the module method, but that is up to you.
After you did that, finish installing your kernel, and reboot.
Not done yet! To make the Visor drivers work, we need to finish making
the USB Serial Converter working. For that, you can refer to the Linux
Kernel Documentation: Documentation/usb/usb-serial.txt. Basically,
what it tells you to do is to make the devices. You can do this by
excuting the commands:
mknod /dev/ttyUSB0 c 188 0
mknod /dev/ttyUSB1 c 188 1
etc...
Right now its limited to 16 connections/ports/devices, so just from 0
to 15 need to be done.
For some reason, the visor gets connected to ttyUSB1, instead of
ttyUSB0, even when its the only USB device. A "neat" thing to do might
be to create link to the device, so you can refer to /dev/visor (or
palm, or pilot, depending on what floats your boat):
cd /dev
ln -s /dev/ttyUSB1 visor
2.3. Installing pilot link
pilot-link is the software package which contains many programs to
talk with you're Visor (or your Palm, if you have one of those). They
run the same OS, and that's what is important.
So you can get the version I got (0.9.3) from here:
ftp://ryeham.ee.ryerson.ca/pub/PalmOS/pilot-link.0.9.3.tar.gz
At the time of writing, http://pilot-link.sourceforge.net was the new
home for this package. Download it, and compile. Version 0.9.0 did NOT
work for me, but this one (0.9.3) worked fine. There are some packages
(rpm,deb) available, but of older versions. (see the PalmOS HOWTO).
You may also try newwer versions, when they appear.
tar xvzf pilot-link.0.9.3.tar.gz
cd pilot-link.0.9.3
./configure --prefix=/usr/visor
make
make install
Also, add /usr/visor/bin to your path. Of course, you can also select
whichever path you prefer. Redhat and other distributions should have
this package available as well, and they will install in their
respective system paths, i.e. /usr/bin.
2.4. Almost Done! (aka testing)
We are pretty much done. Now we need to test it. Of course, the visor
needs to be in the cradle, and the cradle needs to be plugged into
your USB port.
To test, we can use the pilot-xfer, in list mode. For the computer to
realize that the visor really is there, you need to hit the hotsync
button on the cradle. (When a USB device connects, I've noticed that a
bunch of info is dumped to the screen). Then you can run pilot-xfer:
pilot-xfer /dev/visor -l
(Remember, /dev/visor is a symbolic link to /dev/ttyUSB1). You should
get a list of programs/things on your visor. From there, use other
documentation.
3. References
For this document, and, well, learning what i did, i used:
http://www.orbits.com/Palm/ (for
pilot-link info, PalmOS HOWTO)
ftp://ryeham.ee.ryerson.ca/pub/PalmOS
(for pilot-link program)
http://www.linux-usb.org (for
backport/kernel stuff)
http://usbvisor.sourceforge.net