NetBSD irframe and ustir port to FreeBSD

[Viktor Vasilev]

Hello fellow hackers,

I'm porting the NetBSD IrDA frame level driver irframe[1] to FreeBSD.
The port also, for now, includes a driver for one of the USB-IrDA
bridges supported by NetBSD - ustir[2] and a modified version of the
comms/birda suite. The initial work is done and both drivers compile
and load without problems under FreeBSD 5.4.

Due to lack of hardware I haven't been able to test it properly. The
ustir driver works for dongles with the Sigmatel 4200 USB-IrDA chip.
I have one with a Sigmatel 4210 chip (which has a GPL linux driver)
and am trying to make it work. Sigmatel haven't been very cooperative
in supplying datasheets, but I guess I'll keep trying/bugging them.

So, if there is anyone interested in testing the driver and has the
time and the hardware (the man page says, that a Mars II 740 USB IrDA
Adapter should do the work), I'll be very pleased to hear from him.

The next step will be to port the uirda[3] driver, which supports more
devices, and also to get a piece of hardware that's supported and make
it actually work :-)

If you're still wondering what's this all about, the irframe and
device drivers will make it, for example, possible to use your mobile
phone and an USB-IrDA dongle for dial-up or synchronisation. At the
moment this is only possible if you have an IrDA transceiver masked as
a serial port in your laptop/desktop. Or if you use bluetooth.

Instructions on patching the source are available here:

  http://0xdeadc0de.net/v/usb-irda/


Hats off to Lennart Augustsson, David Sainty, Tommy Bohlin and the
other NetBSD hackers for writing the code.


Cheers,
Viktor


[1] http://netbsd.gw.com/cgi-bin/man-cgi?irframe++NetBSD-current
[2] http://netbsd.gw.com/cgi-bin/man-cgi?ustir+4+NetBSD-current
[3] http://netbsd.gw.com/cgi-bin/man-cgi?uirda+4+NetBSD-current

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I have great faith in fools; self-confidence, my friends call it.
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