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Well, I can report some successes here with the ADS Technologies combo |
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firewire and USB 2.0 PCI card in an SGI O2. |
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|
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For the record, this card is on the shelf at most Circuit City stores for |
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about $69 + tax. You can also web order as I did at "thenerds.net" for |
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about $38 + 9.99 shipping + tax. They have 3 left. The vendor part |
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number is DLX-180. Search on that or on ADS Technologies. Although there |
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are other combo cards out there, I picked this one because I could see the |
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ALI logo on the main chip through the plastic bubble case at the store. |
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|
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The card actually comes in two formats that I have seen so far for the |
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same manufacturer part number. The Circuit City in my locale has one with |
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3 external USB 2.0, 2 external Firewire, and one internal Firewire port. |
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The one that I received from "thenerds.net" has 2 external USB 2.0 and 2 |
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external Firewire. Internally it has one Firewire and one USB 2.0. |
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All formats have 3 ports of each - they just differ on how many are |
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exposed externally verses internally. |
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|
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I finally received the dual feature card and stuffed it in the O2 over the |
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weekend. When booted up, the kernel automagically modprobed the firewire |
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and USB stuff on it's own. |
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|
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In regards to USB, I seem to have a thumb drive working perfectly at this |
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point. Here's the details: |
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|
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* The kernel loaded the USB core, and loaded 3 instances of the USB OHCI |
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driver, and 1 instance of the EHCI driver. This didn't seem quite right |
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to me, but what the heck. Let's smoke test something anyway. |
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|
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* I stuck my flash stick and voila - sdb and sdb1 magically instantiated. |
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I mounted, read some files under VFAT, and unmounted. |
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|
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* I pulled the stick out, and ......ew... black screen, dead box. |
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Perhaps time to examine why there's so many USB drivers loaded? |
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|
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* If I recall correctly, the EHCI driver is the right one for a USB 2.0 |
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chipset. I tried turning off the USB OHCI driver in the various |
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/etc/*mod* files but the kernel was still loading multiple USB OHCI and |
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one EHCI. So, being quite determined, I moved usb_ohci.ko to where the |
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kernel loader couldn't find it and reran depmod. I rebooted, and |
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now I have USB core and USB EHCI only. |
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|
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* SUCCESS! I was now able to plug, mount, read/write, unmount, and unplug |
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the thumb drive several times without any problems. |
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|
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In regards to the firewire, as I had indicated, the firewire OHCI |
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modprobed fine and identified the host controller. I plugged a firewire |
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DVD-burnitall and received an attatchment event and some device table |
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info, but the process stopped there - no sr1 or other driver popped into |
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existance. |
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|
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* I plugged and unplugged several times and received event notifications |
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and no crashes or other faults. I consider this promissing. |
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|
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* It's been quite a while since I tried firewire on a linux box, but I |
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beleive there is more to the process to get this working that what I |
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have done thus far. I just need to go through some docs and make sure I |
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have all the required kernel pieces and userland pieces in place. The |
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suspicion is that it will "just work" when everything is set up. |
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|
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TODO's. I would like to exercize the USB and firewire more thorougly. |
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|
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* The DVD-burnitall drive I have has both firewire and USB 2.0 jacks. It |
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would be a really good test to plug in the USB side and show that we can |
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read and burn CD/DVD. Honestly though, I'm just tickled to death that |
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my thumb drives seem to function so that I can move files back and forth |
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between work and home easily. |
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|
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* After disk burning, I would like to try USB bluetooth. I have all the |
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kernel side modules built. It would be another good exercise to show |
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that a bluetooth adaptor works. From there we got phone and pda sync, |
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BT networking, etc. It would be educational to see just how far one can |
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get with all that. |
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|
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* Firewire testing. If I can get firewire support installed correctly, it |
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would be neat to see just how far we can push that with DVD burning, |
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external disks, or DV downloads. |
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|
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I'll try and get my kernel config posted over at Stuart's hardware page |
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today. |
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|
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Happy hacking guys, |
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|
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-S- |
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|
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On Fri, 9 Feb 2007, Kumba wrote: |
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|
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>> [3] Has anyone tried Firewire in the O2 PCI slot? I have an ADS |
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>> Technologies combo Firewire/USB 2.0 PCI card comming soon. This uses an |
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>> ALI chipset. I pulled the USB config from the RC6 CD kernel. I suspect |
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>> it won't be much to make the USB portion work. It will be interesting to |
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>> see about the firewire. Fortunately Firewire chipsets are more |
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>> standardized than USB. I'll report back when I know something here. |
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> |
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> I haven't, but given that USB2 sometimes works better than the onboard scsi |
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> (w/ flash drives), it might work. Give it a shot with some common firewire |
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> device that hopefully isn't too complicated, and let us know what happens. |
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> |
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> --Kumba |
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-- |
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