BeOS driver for USB serial adapters and CDC ACM compatible USB modems

Introduction

This driver is designed to support following USB serial adapters and modems:

NameVendor IDProduct ID
USB CDC ACM-compatible modems:anyany
Prolific PL2303-based adapters:
PL2303 Serial adapter (IODATA USB-RSAQ2)0x067b0x04bb
I/O Data USB serial adapter USB-RSAQ10x04bb0x0a03
Aten Serial adapter"0x05570x2008
TDK USB-PHS Adapter UHA64000x04bf0x0117
Ratoc USB serial adapter REX-USB600x05840xb000
PL2303 Serial adapter (ATEN/IOGEAR UC232A)0x067b0x2303
Elecom UC-SGT0x056e0x5003
FTDI-based:
FTDI 8U100AX serial converter0x04030x8372
FTDI 8U232AM serial converter0x04030x6001
NOTE that There are a lot of USB modems in this world. Not every one can be supported by this driver. Only CDC ACM-compatible modems will works with it. How you can guess it? Just try to install this driver and plug your modem in. If you get the usb0 in ports list - it probably works. If not - obtain the information about your device and send it to me.
NOTE that If your computer has the OHCI-compatible USB hardware you are out of luck. This hardware is not supported by non-Dan0-like versions. See the BeOS.USB.patches vor details and solutions.
NOTE that For Dan0 you have to build a special version of binaries. Read here for details.
WARNING!!! If your system was patched with BeOS.USB.patches - your system is candidate to crash trying this driver!! You must very accurate read this.
What's new:
Version: History:
0.1.0-dev-0 very first "development" release.
1.0.0-RC-1 Release Candidate 1.
  • Code re-designed
  • Code is chaged to be compatible with Dan0.

1. Installation

2. Uninstallation

3. Problems solving

4. "Unknown" devices

If you have something, that looks like USB->RS232(serial) adapter or USB modem and tried it with this driver but have no success - download usb device info tool and use it to get required information.

What is wrong with BeOS.USB.patches?

All know that "classical" BeOS R5 don't works on OHCI USB hardware. But some time ago on one well-known BeOS file-sharing network appeared patches for plain R5. Those patches allows to work with OHCI hardware under this system version. Looks like it is some part of Dan0 or other "leaked" versions. There are 3 patches in BeOS.USB.patches.zip:

1. beos-usb-patch,

2. beos-usb.modem-patch,

3. beos-usb.modem-patch.sm.

The Evil is in two last patches. The source of problem - changed functions in tty module. The Dan0 contains two additional functions in the middle of tty module description table. But the module version was not changed - it is still v1. So if driver, that was compiled with old tty module layout, will try to use it - system crashes. Looks like those patches contains the same "enchanced" tty module like in Dan0. So - you should roll back those modem-patches - restore the previous configuration as described in patches readme. The first one - "beos-usb-patch" is OK.

Information for Dan0 users

The driver is still not working under Dan0 out of box. At first you have no need to use it for ACM-compatible devices, because Dan0 has it's own implementation of usb_acm driver. There is also one problem with Dan0 - the "tty" module was chaged in very dangerous way - there is no possibility to create backward compatible implementation of serial port driver with the new tty interfaces. If you really have one of those USB Serial Adapters and want to use it under Dan0 - you have to make some hand work. Sorry for this, but I have not using Dan0 as my main working system. So you must to build Dan0 version by yourself. Thank you for your patience. Below is an operations you need to install USB serial driver for Dan0:

Siarzuk Zharski

http://www.zharik.host.sk/