Re: Developing a new Driver

[Arend van Spriel <arend@broadcom.com>]

On 03/11/15 00:15, Jonas Gorski wrote:
> On Wed, Mar 11, 2015 at 12:08 AM, Pat Erley<pat-lkml@erley.org>  wrote:
>> On 03/10/2015 04:42 PM, Huseyin wrote:
>>>
>>> Hello everyone,
>>>
>>> I want to develop a driver for my usb wireless adapter. The device name is
>>> AirTies Air 2410, codes are 0x1eda 0x2410. The company’s other usb wireless
>>> adapters (for example, AirTies Air 2310, 0x1eda 0x2310) were using ralink
>>> rt2800 driver, but this one doesn’t work with it.
>>>
>>> I opened up the device’s case, I could only find out that the board was
>>> plotech e169497, 6 94v-0. I googled but these seem to be too vague and I
>>> cannot go any further with it. I couldn’t find any other text on the board.
>>>
>>> I also contacted the company (AirTies) but they didn’t bother to reply.
>>> They provide drivers for windows only.
>>>
>>> What should be the next step? Reverse-engineering the windows driver (I
>>> have no expertise on the subject, and little expertise on windows
>>> altogether) or trying to write a new driver using ralink or any other
>>> existing driver code? Is it a good idea to guess that the driver I’m going
>>> to develop will be similar to rt2800? This way I can make rt2800 recognize
>>> my device and try to find out what goes wrong (which, seems to me, would be
>>> meaningless if device is using a chipset not related to ralink), and change
>>> those parts.
>>>
>>> I asked a little about the subject in the #kernelnewbies channel, people
>>> redirected me to this mail list.
>>>
>>> When I make rt2800 driver recognize my device, this is what I get:
>>>
>>> ieee80211 phy0: rt2x00usb_vendor_request: Error - Vendor Request 0x07
>>> failed for offset 0x1000 with error -110
>>> ieee80211 phy0: rt2800_probe_rt: Error - Invalid RT chipset 0xffff, rev
>>> 8800 detected
>>> ieee80211 phy0: rt2x00lib_probe_dev: Error - Failed to allocate device
>>> usbcore: registered new interface driver rt2800usb
>>>
>>
>> Based on their driver, it's a broadcom chip in there:
>>
>>
>>    inflating:
>> AirTiesWirelessUSBAdapterSetup_1.0.1.0/Drivers/Air2410-Air2411/VistaDriver/bcmh43xx.cat
>>    inflating:
>> AirTiesWirelessUSBAdapterSetup_1.0.1.0/Drivers/Air2410-Air2411/VistaDriver/bcmihvsrv.dll
>>    inflating:
>> AirTiesWirelessUSBAdapterSetup_1.0.1.0/Drivers/Air2410-Air2411/VistaDriver/bcmihvui.dll
>>    inflating:
>> AirTiesWirelessUSBAdapterSetup_1.0.1.0/Drivers/Air2410-Air2411/VistaDriver/bcmwlcoi.dll
>>    inflating:
>> AirTiesWirelessUSBAdapterSetup_1.0.1.0/Drivers/Air2410-Air2411/VistaDriver/bcmwlhigh6.inf
>>    inflating:
>> AirTiesWirelessUSBAdapterSetup_1.0.1.0/Drivers/Air2410-Air2411/VistaDriver/bcmwlhigh6.sys
>>    inflating:
>> AirTiesWirelessUSBAdapterSetup_1.0.1.0/Drivers/Air2410-Air2411/VistaDriver/WdfCoInstaller01005.dll
>>
>> I don't know what the status of broadcom and usb drivers is though.
>
> According to wikidevi[1], it uses BCM4323, which is SSB based, quite
> old, and will never be supported by brcmfmac, and probably never by
> b43 (one would need to reverse engineer the usb protocol used by
> broadcom).

and this device uses a different driver model (bmac) which is not 
supported by brcmfmac nor brcmsmac. You can tell because it says 
"bcmwlhigh6.sys".

Regards,
Arend

> Jonas
>
> [1] https://wikidevi.com/wiki/AirTies_Air_2410
> --
> To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-wireless" in
> the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org
> More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html