Re: belkin usb serial converter (mct_u232), break not working

[Thomas Stewart <thomas@stewarts.org.uk>]

On Thursday 21 October 2004 20:44, Paul Fulghum wrote:
> I looked at mct_232.h and noticed the comment:
>
> "There seem to be two bugs in the Win98 driver:
> the break does not work (bit 6 is not asserted) and the
> stick parity bit is not cleared when set once."
> The driver was reverse engineered from the Win98 driver.
>
> Even though the LCR for this device is similar to
> the LCR of a 16550 UART, some bits work differently.
>
> This suggests to me that either the device does not
> properly support break, or that the break is
> controlled through a different USB request and not
> through MCT_U232_SET_LINE_CTRL_REQUEST
>
> The Linux and FreeBSD drivers do the same thing
> for setting break, so no new info there.
> I don't have access to the device or manufacturer docs.
>
> The only thing I can suggest is if you have
> access to a Windows 2000/XP machine, try and generate
> a break with the manufacturer provided drivers.
> If you can't, then the device does not support break.
> If you can, then maybe you can use USB sniffer
> software to look at the USB requests going to the device.

I tried the converter on a XP machine and unfortunately while using the 
manufacturer provided drivers I was unable to produce a break :-(

As a last resort I tried Belkins tech support line. The first time I called I 
was told the product (F5U109ea) was designed for PDA use only and it would 
generate breaks fine if connected to them. Admittedly it is marketed as such 
(http://catalog.belkin.com/IWCatProductPage.process?Product_Id=103226). I was 
told to buy a F5U103 instead 
(http://catalog.belkin.com/IWCatProductPage.process?Product_Id=66002). Not 
happy with this I rang back to talk to another person, this time I was not 
fobbed off as quickly and although the tech support guy did not know what a 
break was, he offered to look into it and call me back. I've not heard back 
(yet), but I'm not too surprised.

Interestingly I got my hands on a F5U103 and it works fine (uses another chip 
and consequently module). However they are so much more bulky I don't think 
I'm going to bother changing over.

Thanks for all the help :-)

Regards
-- 
Tom

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