OESF Portables Forum

Everything Else => General Support and Discussion => Zaurus General Forums => Archived Forums => Hardware Mods => Topic started by: louigi600 on August 09, 2007, 03:46:32 am

Title: Usb Host Controller For C7x0
Post by: louigi600 on August 09, 2007, 03:46:32 am

Stuffing one inside has many difficulties ... space, spare gpio pins, driver ... etc

Ok I've seen tons of pcmcia usb controllers: could it be possible to make one CF usb controller ? ... or even better anyone ever seen one ready made ?

Now I really like thye CF slot but I'm willing to occupy it with a (1 port or 2 port) usb host controller that would give me the possibility to connect to my c7x0 anything that could be plugged into the CF slot ... and possibly even more.

If I had such a thing in my c860 I think it would be a pretty close match as to which is my favorite .... C1K or C860 ;-)

Title: Usb Host Controller For C7x0
Post by: pelrun on August 09, 2007, 05:32:59 am

Unfortunately what you've actually seen is plenty of *CardBus* usb controllers; CardBus is 32-bit whereas PCMCIA is 16-bit. If there was a PCMCIA usb controller I would have snapped one up to use with my CF-to-PCMCIA adapter...

There was one CF USB host made by Ratoc; even a couple of years ago they were pretty scarce. There's also another one which was supposedly available more recently but I'm not sure anyone's seen it in the wild. Besides, there weren't any drivers for that one.

Occasionally of late I've seen USB host chips, but none which really had enough documentation for me to seriously consider trying to hack something up.

Title: Usb Host Controller For C7x0
Post by: koen on August 09, 2007, 06:20:26 am

All the ratoc cfu-1u needs is http://www.angstrom-distribution.org/repo/...module-sl811-cs (http://www.angstrom-distribution.org/repo/?action=details&pnm=kernel-module-sl811-cs)

Title: Usb Host Controller For C7x0
Post by: koen on August 09, 2007, 08:04:53 am

and a pic: http://dominion.kabel.utwente.nl/koen/pda/...mages/cfu1u.jpg (http://dominion.kabel.utwente.nl/koen/pda/accessories/images/cfu1u.jpg)

Title: Usb Host Controller For C7x0
Post by: louigi600 on August 10, 2007, 05:43:30 am

ok where can I get one of those ratoc things ?

Title: Usb Host Controller For C7x0
Post by: Da_Blitz on August 11, 2007, 09:27:14 am

i heard they were discontinued and were getting fairly rare however i did hear about this (http://www.brighthand.com/default.asp?newsID=11046) about a month ago or more. not sure what its driver support is like however but it would be intresting

Title: Usb Host Controller For C7x0
Post by: louigi600 on August 12, 2007, 05:10:18 am

I ended up on the manufactoreràs home page ... where the old SolarExpress PDA has been replaced by the SolarExpress PDAII.
http://www.twin-paradox.com/SEPDA.html (http://www.twin-paradox.com/SEPDA.html)
And they apparently have an online store:
http://www.lightconecorp.com/ (http://www.lightconecorp.com/)
but $ 85 ( 65 Euro) is a little more expensive then what I was hoping for. I'll hunt around for SolarExpress PDAII to see if I can find one cheeper.

Alco the SolarExpress PDAII is a single USB 1.1 Host controller with a mini-A plug and OTG power output (200mA).
I've no idea if it's possible to open it up to mod the CF card to increase the 200mA limit to something close to the standard usb specification.

I was really hoping I could drive my zd1211 directly from the SolarExpress PDAII :-( ....
anuone know of any other alternatives ?

Title: Usb Host Controller For C7x0
Post by: pelrun on August 12, 2007, 08:26:20 pm

Be warned - as far as I can tell there are no linux drivers for the solarexpress card...