Re: Some weird new GOBI card

[Marcel Holtmann <marcel holtmann org>]

Hi Dan,

> > Pretty straight forward and normal stuff. Even works fine with my
> > prototype GOBI loader application that uses libusb directly instead of
> > bothering with the kernel driver and the TTY layer. However my other
> > card looks like this:
> 
> Got something against qcserial or the tty layer? :)

I have nothing against the TTY layer per se, but attaching two bulk
endpoints to the TTY layer while you could just pipe the firmware
loading magic over it directly seems overhead. Not that it matters. I
was just playing with the protocol itself and messing with the USB
endpoints directly ;)

My other problem is that I really wanna get proper devtype support for
serial ports into the kernel. I have fixed most of the network devices
now and next is the TTY stuff.

> Is this an HP 0x241d device?

The mysterious card that I have is not an HP card, but could be well
that newer HP cards are similar. Maybe this is just 2nd generation GOBI
card. If I knew that they sell these cards I would tell you, but I have
actually no idea, it just ended up on my desk with GOBI written on it.

> I've got Windows USB traces of the HP connection manager talking to my
> Gobi but haven't ever had time to dig into them.  It appears to use the
> standard Qualcomm PPP-style framing for talking to the card.  I'd love
> to be able to activate the cdc-ether-like functionality of the device
> but of course nobody knows how.  Perhaps you can get Qualcomm to tell us
> how to talk to it?

So far what I have been able to tell is that it involves QMI (and maybe
QMUX) for their control path and the rest is some form of Ethernet
framing. Also my HP card under Windows will not load the firmware. Seems
that only works with AT&T account or I am too stupid to get this up and
running. Otherwise I have USB protocol analyzer hardware that I could
stick between it to get some proper traces.

And yes, I am trying to get Qualcomm to do the right thing and open
source this beast. We need the full GPRS node handling for signal
strength and roaming indicators. Having one TTY is just not enough for
proper driving this card.

Also my guess is that what we have in the Palm Pre or the Android/G1
phones is actually similar to what we have in the GOBI card. For all I
know all older Qualcomm based cards are similar, but most vendors are
hiding the Qualcomm specific QMI interfaces.

Regards

Marcel