Can I access a USB device that has no driver attached?

[Darren Pilgrim]

> From: Bernd Walter [mailto:ticso at cicely12.cicely.de] 
> On Thu, Jun 03, 2004 at 06:22:54PM -0700, Darren Pilgrim wrote:
> > I have a UPS with a USB interface.  There isn't a specific UPS driver in
> > FreeBSD beyond uhid.  If I were to connect the UPS's interface port
> > without having a driver attached, is it still possible to talk to the
> > device in some way?  I ask because I'm helping get nut (sysutils/nut)
> > working for USB UPSes under FreeBSD.
> 
> Maybe your question is outdated, but since noone answered yet.
> 
> - You can enhance our uhid driver
> - You can write your own driver
> - You can do raw control transfers via /dev/usb*
> - You can also do raw control and pipe trandfers if ugen takes the
>   device
> - You can use libusb for portable (Linux, ...) device access via ugen

Wow, I'd given up on getting an answer for this one.  Here's the situation
right now:

With some custom patches provided some helpful folks, I've been able to get
nut's newhidups driver to compile, run, and talk to the device without
crashing.  As newhidups uses libusb, it is necessary to attach the USB with
ugen.  In debugging mode, the newhidups driver dumps the entire usage table
data for the device.  Unfortunately, APC irrationally believes the format of
this data to be their intellectual property and thus refuses to make it
available, even under NDA.  APC will, however, send, at no cost to the
customer, serial cables to be used with any UPS that comes with a USB cable.