Heya,

On 04 May 2001 21:04:13 -0500
"Jon Schewe" <jpschewe at mtu.net> wrote:

> Ok, so has anyone else noticed that the visor USB driver worked
perfectly fine
> under 2.2.8, but all of the 2.4.x kernels have screwed it up?  Under
2.4.2 and
> 2.4.3 I was at least able to get data from the visor to the PC, just not
the
> other way.  Now under 2.4.4 I can't get data either way.  It really irks
me
> when someone adds a feature to a piece of software and then in the next
rev
> breaks it.

Via UHCI controller, eh? :)

First, I'll tell you that I have a solid fix for this - so that way, if
you don't want to read my rant, you can just skip forward to the last
paragraph. This apparent breakage of the Visor driver is one of the
absolute stupidest, most annoying, least thought out occurrances I have
yet to come across in Linux, and I've come across a few... 

Here is the story: With 2.4.2 and on, there exist _two_ UHCI USB
drivers... the standard driver (VIA etc.) and the 'JE' driver. This is not
readily apparent to folks like myself who configure their kernel from the
command line "make menuconfig" becuase (since the two drivers are mutually
exclusive) if you have one of them selected, the other option does not
even appear. However, if you de-select the currectly selected UCHI driver,
suddenly, both options are visible. Clever, eh? Apparently this is not an
issue with 'make xconfig' but I haven't looked at this myself.

So onto the real evil here.. if you take a /usr/src/linux/.config file
from 2.4.0 or earlier, and just drop it into the 2.4.2+ source tree,
something dumb happens: It automatically selects the _new_ driver (the
wrong one) instead of the old driver (the correct, working one). You build
your kernel and all is well, except that you can't install applications to
the visor or make large changes to the address book, etc. You never
suspect that you selected the wrong UCHI driver, as you made no changes...
Double clever.

This bug held my Visor useless for two months until I talked to a fellow
on IRC (kimo_sabe on DalNET #linux) who told me the tale. I reconfigured,
found the right driver, recompiled and all is well. The moral of the
story? IRC is good.


                           -.bill.layer.-
                          
-.those who are talking don't know, and those who know aren't talking.-

           -.frogtown.-     -.minnesota.-      -.u.s.a.-