Hi,
My name is Ken Hahn. I work as an Engineer at Micro Solutions (the people
who make BACKPACK CD-RW's and CD-ROMS).
I'm happy to be able to tell you that we are releasing source code to make
our BACKPACK USB adapter work with Linux, under the GPL (attached to this
e-mail).
This driver works by uploading firmware to the adapter which makes it look
like a mass-storage class device. At this point, the usb-storage code takes
over. There are actually 5 firmwares (1 to scan, and 4 for different types
of drives).
This code does come with a caveat. It is not finished yet, I just figured
I'd get it up and out to others to be looked at. It has one particular
problem that will keep it from working under certain circumstances (next
paragraph describes the problem and how to get around it)
Our device is not quite a self powered device or a usb-powered device. As a
result, when you connect it to the drive before you connect it to a USB hub,
it requires more time to initialize than is currently allowed by the Linux
kernel. This can be solved by incrementing HUB_PROBE_TRIES in hub.c from 2
to 3 retries, as this allows enough time for the device to initialize. (We
need about 500 ms. I belive the current 2 retries only provides 400 ms)
Would folk be open to increasing this number from 2 to 3? This would be the
simplest solve as it doesn't really punish any device that probes faster.
Thanks, and enjoy the code,
Ken Hahn
Engineer - Micro Solutions
P.S. Any help merging this into kernel code (and creating a patch out of
it) will be very much appreciated! :)
Makefile.dat
bpckusb.h
bpckusb_fw.h
bpckusb.c
