FIR dongle on VIA EPIA

Forum: System
Topic: FIR dongle on VIA EPIA
started by: sixdiamants

Posted by sixdiamants on Jan. 07 2008,21:46

Hello all,
I've been trying to get an Actisys IR-210L infrared dongle running. It is plugged into a FIR 5-pin connector on my Via Epia 5000 motherboard. Extensive googling yielded no result so far.

Code Sample

dmesg|grep irda:
<6>IrDA: Registered device irda0

Afaik this indicates that the kernel found an irda-compatible chipset.

Code Sample

[home/dsl]#irattach irda0 -s
[home/dsl]#ifconfig
irda0 Link encap:UNSPEC HWaddr 59-C3-98-8B-00-00-00-00-00-00-00
UP RUNNING NOARP MTU:2048 Metric:1
RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:1806 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:8
RX bytes:0 (0.0 B) TX bytes:57534 (56.1 KiB)

This would indicate that I've got an infrared interface looking to discover near devices - Vivat!

However, syslog looks distinctly dodgier:

Code Sample

[home/dsl]#cat /var/log/messages
Jan 7 22:22:04 weksarahdio user.info irattach: executing: '/sbin/modprobe irda0'
Jan 7 22:22:04 weksarahdio user.info irattach: + modprobe: Can't locate module irda0
Jan 7 22:22:04 weksarahdio user.info irattach: Trying to load module irda0 exited with status 255
Jan 7 22:22:04 weksarahdio user.info irattach: executing: 'echo weksarahdio > /proc/sys/net/irda/devname'
Jan 7 22:22:04 weksarahdio user.info irattach: executing: 'echo 1 > /proc/sys/net/irda/discovery'
Jan 7 22:22:04 weksarahdio user.info irattach: Starting device irda0

Then run irdadump to see that the thing ignores my beloved Siemens C75 placed close to the dongle.

Code Sample

21:37:05.600929 xid:cmd 8b98c359 > ffffffff S=6 s=0 (14)
21:37:05.690935 xid:cmd 8b98c359 > ffffffff S=6 s=1 (14)
21:37:05.780963 xid:cmd 8b98c359 > ffffffff S=6 s=2 (14)
21:37:05.870933 xid:cmd 8b98c359 > ffffffff S=6 s=3 (14)
21:37:05.960933 xid:cmd 8b98c359 > ffffffff S=6 s=4 (14)
21:37:06.050934 xid:cmd 8b98c359 > ffffffff S=6 s=5 (14)
21:37:06.140936 xid:cmd 8b98c359 > ffffffff S=6 s=* weksarahdio hint=0400 [ Computer ] (27)

Trying variations with -d actisys et al. yield similar results. This is driving me bonkers and any hints would be greatly appreciated !!
Cheers, Bob

Posted by Juanito on Jan. 08 2008,03:47

Are you trying to use the device in SIR emulation mode or have you loaded a module to try to use it in FIR mode?

The reason I ask is that you might need to disable a conflicting serial port to use the the device in FIR mode. In SIR mode you might need to tell the system which /dev to use.

For info, on my laptop the SMCS IrCC device will work in SIR mode but hangs dsl when I attempt to use it in FIR mode. Using dsln, both SIR and FIR work.

Posted by curaga on Jan. 08 2008,18:11

Irda modules aren't in the base - they can be gotten from net-modules.tar.gz from current/extra_modules from your favorite mirror..

Posted by Juanito on Jan. 09 2008,03:32

Quote

Irda modules aren't in the base

- depends which one, they are in 3.x but not in 4.x

You can also get the irda modules for 4.x from the mydsl modules section - irda_modules-2.4.31.dsl

Posted by curaga on Jan. 09 2008,15:53

Quote

Jan 7 22:22:04 weksarahdio user.info irattach: + modprobe: Can't locate module irda0

From this I assumed 4.x..

Posted by sixdiamants on Jan. 10 2008,22:05

Gents,
I had this kernel module loaded from boot:

Code Sample

dsl@ttyp0[dsls]$ lsmod|grep irda
irda 90352 0 [via-ircc]

Obviously, DSL took a liking to some hardware on the Epia MB and decided to load the via-ircc module. Haven't got a clue what it does though so I removed it and replaced it by the irda module
included in irda-utils.unc into the kernel,

Code Sample

# rmmod via-ircc
# modprobe irda
# lsmod |grep irda
irda 90352 0

# setserial /dev/ttyS1
/dev/ttyS1, UART: unknown, Port: 0x02f8, IRQ: 3
# setserial /dev/ttyS0
/dev/ttyS0, UART: 16550A, Port: 0x03f8, IRQ: 4
# modprobe irport
# modprobe irtty

I've got a serial port here:

# setserial /dev/ttyS0
/dev/ttyS0, UART: 16550A, Port: 0x03f8, IRQ: 4
#irattach /dev/ttyS0 -s
#cat /var/log/messages
...
Jan 11 04:21:09 weksarahdio user.info irattach: executing: 'echo weksarahdio > /proc/sys/net/irda/devname'
Jan 11 04:21:09 weksarahdio user.info irattach: executing: 'echo 1 > /proc/sys/net/irda/discovery'
Jan 11 04:21:09 weksarahdio user.info irattach: Starting device irda0

But again to no avail !
The dongle is plugged into this 5-pin connector on the motherboard. I suppose that the ttyS0 is the serial port so irattach /dev/ttyS0 is unlikely to receive any packets !
When I deactivate the FIR thingy in Bios, the via-ircc is not loaded which suggests there's a linux-ready device lurking there.
So it would seem that I've got to attach my irda stack to this through this mysterious via-ircc module.
Cheers.

Posted by Juanito on Jan. 11 2008,06:41

You might want to load more of the irda modules or change the interrupts to match your ir device, maybe < this post > might help?

You could also try unloading the serial module, loading the FIR module for your device and then connect in FIR mode?