Re: [coldsync-hackers] Sony T415 and FreeBSD..

[Greg KH <greg at kroah dot com>]

On Wed, Mar 20, 2002 at 12:42:42PM -0700, Cliff L. Biffle wrote:
> On Wednesday 20 March 2002 09:54 am, you wrote:
> > > I just picked up a fresh T415 last night, absolutly no problems syncing
> > > under coldsync 2.2.5 w/ linux 2.4.18.
> >
> > OK, so that must mean it's a FreeBSD 4.4 Rel. thing with the USB port.
> 
> As far as I can tell, the Linux versions (ymmv) use a module called uvisor 
> which was designed for the Handspring line of devices and abstracts the 
> communications protocol.  (Corrections welcome.)

Linux's kernel module is called 'visor'.  It was written to provide a
tty interface to a USB HandSpring visor to allow pilot-link to work
properly with these devices.  At the time it was created, there were no
active pilot-link developers, so this was necessary.

Since then, it has grown to support all USB Palm OS devices.  Yes, most
of it's functionality can be done purely from userspace (as patches to
coldsync for libusb have proven).  However the number of people who run
PPP over the connection to talk directly to their device has been
growning, and the kernel module is required for that.

Also, the userspace implementation can't take advantage of some of the
speed tweaks that is done in the kernel driver.  This makes the kernel
driver much faster than any userspace implementation could be.

Hope that helps clear things up.

greg k-h

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