Handspring-Visor mini-HOWTO
 Ryan VanderBijl
 v0.3, April 7, 2000

 Using the Visor with Linux and your USB port
 ______________________________________________________________________

 Table of Contents


 1. Introduction

    1.1 About this Document
    1.2 Disclaimer
    1.3 History
    1.4 Copyright

 2. Installing Stuff

    2.1 Requirements
    2.2 Getting your kernel to support USB
    2.3 Installing pilot link
    2.4 Almost Done! (aka testing)

 3. References



 ______________________________________________________________________

 1.  Introduction

 1.1.  About this Document

 This document was first created by Ryan VanderBijl, April 6, 2:00am.
 It has been edited by Miles Lott.  I recieved my Handvisor today, and
 have struggled getting it to work, and found no good HOWTO yet, so
 thought i'd make one. By some random mutation, you might be able to
 find a new version on my web page, but that is up to chance. Test your
 luck at:

 http://www.calvin.edu/~rvbijl39/ <http://www.calvin.edu/~rvbijl39/>

 or

 http://usbvisor.sourceforge.net <http://usbvisor.sourceforge.net>

 I used the vi editor. Anything else would have been evil. No spell
 check has yet been run on this document. So, if you have a problem
 with my spellling, tuff luck.

 1.2.  Disclaimer

 Hmm... what did I claim? Oh well. I am really a newbie at this
 usb/visor stuff, so i really couldn't answer to many of your
 questions.  There are people who could help you much better, who
 maintain the sites I refer to at the end of the document. However,
 feel free to send me questions, or updates to this document. My email
 address is: [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>

 1.3.  History


   v0.1 - initial release


   v0.2 - HTML-ized version

   v0.3 - SGML-ized, Added modifications by Miles Lott

 1.4.  Copyright

 This document is Copyright 2000, by Ryan VanderBijl.  You may
 distribute freely under the terms of the GPL (www.gnu.org).

 2.  Installing Stuff

 2.1.  Requirements

 Some obvious things are required, such as a computer, USB ports, hand
 visor (and USB cradle), Linux, etc. You also should know how to
 compile stuff, like the kernel.

 Most critical is determining which type of USB host controller you
 have. Intel chipset motherboards, i.e. the BX chipset, are typically
 UHCI controllers. Most addon cards are OHCI controllers. You could try


 cat /proc/pci



 or use


 lspci -vv



 and look for your controller in there.  It should say which type you
 have. You should refer to http://www.linux-usb.org <http://www.linux-
 usb.org> for further details. The kernel documentation in the
 directory (Documentation/usb/usb.txt) may also be helpful.

 Now lets see... working USB support was first introduced in the Linux
 Development Kernels, around v2.3.40. The latest version, of this
 writing was v2.3.99pre3. I tried briefly, but that broke a number of
 things on my system, and I was too lazy to fix them. SO. What I did
 instead was to get 'The v2.2 Linux USB drivers backport'. This is
 available from http://www.linux-usb.org <http://www.linux-usb.org>

 http://www.suse.cz/development/usb-
 backport/usb-2.3.50-1-for-2.2.14.diff.gz
 <http://www.suse.cz/development/usb-
 backport/usb-2.3.50-1-for-2.2.14.diff.gz>

 So, the bear minimum kernel version is 2.2.14, which is what I'm
 using.  And it works. Check for the latest backport patch if still
 available or relevant when you are reading this.  If kernel version
 2.4 is out, use that kernel, otherwise use the latest backport patch.

 2.2.  Getting your kernel to support USB

 To install the USB backport, you can do something like this: (cut and
 paste from:http://www.suse.cz/development/usb-backport/)



 cd /usr/src
 tar xzvf linux-2.2.14.tar.gz
 cd linux
 gzip -dc ../usb-2.3.50-1-for-2.2.14.diff.gz | patch -p1
 make distclean



 Configure, and then make your kernel. Make sure to enable:


   USB support (CONFIG_USB),

   the appropriate controller - UHCI, alternate UNCI, or OHCI
    (CONFIG_USB_UHCI, CONFIG_USB_UHCI_ALT, or CONFIG_USB_OHCI)

   USB Serial Converter support (CONFIG_USB_SERIAL)

   USB Handspring Visor Driver (CONFIG_USB_SERIAL_VISOR) (serial
    converter's sub-option)

 I compiled these into the kernel, but as modules should work. The
 developer(s) prefer the module method, but that is up to you.

 After you did that, finish installing your kernel, and reboot.

 Not done yet! To make the Visor drivers work, we need to finish making
 the USB Serial Converter working. For that, you can refer to the Linux
 Kernel Documentation: Documentation/usb/usb-serial.txt.  Basically,
 what it tells you to do is to make the devices. You can do this by
 excuting the commands:


 mknod /dev/ttyUSB0 c 188 0
 mknod /dev/ttyUSB1 c 188 1
 etc...



 Right now its limited to 16 connections/ports/devices, so just from 0
 to 15 need to be done.


 For some reason, the visor gets connected to ttyUSB1, instead of
 ttyUSB0, even when its the only USB device. A "neat" thing to do might
 be to create link to the device, so you can refer to /dev/visor (or
 palm, or pilot, depending on what floats your boat):


 cd /dev
 ln -s /dev/ttyUSB1 visor



 2.3.  Installing pilot link

 pilot-link is the software package which contains many programs to
 talk with you're Visor (or your Palm, if you have one of those). They
 run the same OS, and that's what is important.

 So you can get the version I got (0.9.3) from here:

 ftp://ryeham.ee.ryerson.ca/pub/PalmOS/pilot-link.0.9.3.tar.gz
 <ftp://ryeham.ee.ryerson.ca/pub/PalmOS/pilot-link.0.9.3.tar.gz>


 At the time of writing, http://pilot-link.sourceforge.net was the new
 home for this package. Download it, and compile. Version 0.9.0 did NOT
 work for me, but this one (0.9.3) worked fine. There are some packages
 (rpm,deb) available, but of older versions. (see the PalmOS HOWTO).
 You may also try newwer versions, when they appear.


 tar xvzf pilot-link.0.9.3.tar.gz
 cd pilot-link.0.9.3
 ./configure --prefix=/usr/visor
 make
 make install



 Also, add /usr/visor/bin to your path. Of course, you can also select
 whichever path you prefer. Redhat and other distributions should have
 this package available as well, and they will install in their
 respective system paths, i.e. /usr/bin.

 2.4.  Almost Done! (aka testing)

 We are pretty much done. Now we need to test it. Of course, the visor
 needs to be in the cradle, and the cradle needs to be plugged into
 your USB port.

 To test, we can use the pilot-xfer, in list mode. For the computer to
 realize that the visor really is there, you need to hit the hotsync
 button on the cradle. (When a USB device connects, I've noticed that a
 bunch of info is dumped to the screen). Then you can run pilot-xfer:


 pilot-xfer /dev/visor -l



 (Remember, /dev/visor is a symbolic link to /dev/ttyUSB1). You should
 get a list of programs/things on your visor. From there, use other
 documentation.

 3.  References

 For this document, and, well, learning what i did, i used:


   http://www.orbits.com/Palm/ <http://www.orbits.com/Palm/> (for
    pilot-link info, PalmOS HOWTO)

   ftp://ryeham.ee.ryerson.ca/pub/PalmOS
    <ftp://ryeham.ee.ryerson.ca/pub/PalmOS> (for pilot-link program)

   http://www.linux-usb.org <http://www.linux-usb.org> (for
    backport/kernel stuff)

   http://usbvisor.sourceforge.net <http://usbvisor.sourceforge.net>

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