Is there a Linux driver for the Sony Ericsson GC89 PC card?

Hi there!

I was wondering if anyone knows whether there is a Linux driver(2.4, 2.6)
for the Sony Ericsson GC89 PC card?
http://www.sonyericsson.com/spg.jsp?...p5_1&pid=10225

The card only came with a Windows driver, and after emailing Sony Ericsson,
they said they didn't have a driver for Linux

Thanks in advance

On Wed, 01 Feb 2006 17:41:47 -0800, Juke wrote:

> Hi there!
>
> I was wondering if anyone knows whether there is a Linux driver(2.4, 2.6)
> for the Sony Ericsson GC89 PC card?
> http://www.sonyericsson.com/spg.jsp?...p5_1&pid=10225
>
> The card only came with a Windows driver, and after emailing Sony Ericsson,
> they said they didn't have a driver for Linux
>
> Thanks in advance

Well I don't have any experience with this card, it's new and I can't find
much info about it regarding Linux. However, I use a similar (not really
but kind of) card from Keyocera (KPC650) for Verizon's EVDO network. Whats
interesting is most of the EVDO cards are simply standard serial modems
with USB->Serial converters inside them. It uses the standard usb-serial
driver in the Linux kernel. Maybe this card is similar in that respect?
The EVDO cards accept standard AT modem commands and they work great. No
particular driver was needed just a kernel patch and usb-serial generic
kernel driver.

I wrote a how-to article here:
http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t...d66375741fb88d

It's also posted in alt.os.linux.gentoo

If you could get your hands on one for a little while, experiment with it,
plug it in, enable the usb-serial driver, try to find some documentation
on it. Maybe it will work in a similar fashion, maybe its totally
proprietary like I would expect from Sony.

Either way it's worth a shot.

Good luck! I know I am very interested and will be keeping an eye on it
myself. The more hardware support Linux gets the better. Maybe you'll
write a similar how-to for this card in the future.

--
Nick DePetrillo
Network Security Engineer
OSHEAN
PGP Key: http://pgp.mit.edu:11371/pks/lookup?...rch=0x121245B5

I noticed directly after posting my response that you do indeed have one
of these cards. I was formulating my response faster than I read the
message, sorry I jumped the gun.

Perhaps you can try the usb-serial suggestion above and post back some
output from "dmesg"? Send back as much information about the card as you
can, maybe I or someone else can make something of it.

--
Nick DePetrillo
Network Security Engineer
OSHEAN
PGP Key: http://pgp.mit.edu:11371/pks/lookup?...rch=0x121245B5

Hi Nicholas,

thanks for the info.

Here's the output of the dmesg when I inserted the GC89 card in a 2.6.15
kernel:

pccard: CardBus card inserted into slot 0
PCI: Enabling device 0000:03:00.1 (0000 -> 0001)
ACPI: PCI Interrupt 0000:03:00.1[A] -> Link [LNKA] -> GSI 11 (level, low) ->
IRQ 11
0000:03:00.1: ttyS4 at I/O 0x4000 (irq = 11) is a 16550A

So, it does recognize that this is a PCcard and that it has been mounted
onto /dev/ttyS4 as a serial device

I am going to look at your web site in a minute

Thanks


"Nicholas DePetrillo" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news(E-Mail Removed)...
> On Wed, 01 Feb 2006 17:41:47 -0800, Juke wrote:
>
>> Hi there!
>>
>> I was wondering if anyone knows whether there is a Linux driver(2.4, 2.6)
>> for the Sony Ericsson GC89 PC card?
>> http://www.sonyericsson.com/spg.jsp?...p5_1&pid=10225
>>
>> The card only came with a Windows driver, and after emailing Sony
>> Ericsson,
>> they said they didn't have a driver for Linux
>>
>> Thanks in advance
>
> Well I don't have any experience with this card, it's new and I can't find
> much info about it regarding Linux. However, I use a similar (not really
> but kind of) card from Keyocera (KPC650) for Verizon's EVDO network. Whats
> interesting is most of the EVDO cards are simply standard serial modems
> with USB->Serial converters inside them. It uses the standard usb-serial
> driver in the Linux kernel. Maybe this card is similar in that respect?
> The EVDO cards accept standard AT modem commands and they work great. No
> particular driver was needed just a kernel patch and usb-serial generic
> kernel driver.
>
> I wrote a how-to article here:
> http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t...d66375741fb88d
>
> It's also posted in alt.os.linux.gentoo
>
> If you could get your hands on one for a little while, experiment with it,
> plug it in, enable the usb-serial driver, try to find some documentation
> on it. Maybe it will work in a similar fashion, maybe its totally
> proprietary like I would expect from Sony.
>
> Either way it's worth a shot.
>
> Good luck! I know I am very interested and will be keeping an eye on it
> myself. The more hardware support Linux gets the better. Maybe you'll
> write a similar how-to for this card in the future.
>
> --
> Nick DePetrillo
> Network Security Engineer
> OSHEAN
> PGP Key: http://pgp.mit.edu:11371/pks/lookup?...rch=0x121245B5
>

On Wed, 01 Feb 2006 20:18:06 -0800, Juke wrote:

> Hi Nicholas,
>
> thanks for the info.
>
> Here's the output of the dmesg when I inserted the GC89 card in a 2.6.15
> kernel:
>
> pccard: CardBus card inserted into slot 0
> PCI: Enabling device 0000:03:00.1 (0000 -> 0001)
> ACPI: PCI Interrupt 0000:03:00.1[A] -> Link [LNKA] -> GSI 11 (level, low) ->
> IRQ 11
> 0000:03:00.1: ttyS4 at I/O 0x4000 (irq = 11) is a 16550A
>
> So, it does recognize that this is a PCcard and that it has been mounted
> onto /dev/ttyS4 as a serial device
>
> I am going to look at your web site in a minute
>
> Thanks

Interesting, try out some of the things in my how-to article and see what
you can figure out.

Good luck!

--
Nick DePetrillo
Network Security Engineer
OSHEAN
PGP Key: http://pgp.mit.edu:11371/pks/lookup?...rch=0x121245B5

Hi Nicholas

Regarding how you made your card work with Gentoo, I was wondering if you
had a reference to write the commands in your verizon-connect and
verizon-disconnect scripts. Are those "CONNECT" , "ABORT" , etc commands
standard or only for your scenario

My GC89 will be using the T-Mobile service and I will be making it work on
an Intel Stargate 1 SBC that runs Linux 2.4 . The directions to do that(sort
of) are rather similar to yours in that we need to use the ppp :
http://www.lecs.cs.ucla.edu/wiki/ind.../Stargate-gprs

Yours Sincerely,
Ian

"Nicholas DePetrillo" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news(E-Mail Removed)...
> On Wed, 01 Feb 2006 20:18:06 -0800, Juke wrote:
>
>> Hi Nicholas,
>>
>> thanks for the info.
>>
>> Here's the output of the dmesg when I inserted the GC89 card in a 2.6.15
>> kernel:
>>
>> pccard: CardBus card inserted into slot 0
>> PCI: Enabling device 0000:03:00.1 (0000 -> 0001)
>> ACPI: PCI Interrupt 0000:03:00.1[A] -> Link [LNKA] -> GSI 11 (level,
>> low) ->
>> IRQ 11
>> 0000:03:00.1: ttyS4 at I/O 0x4000 (irq = 11) is a 16550A
>>
>> So, it does recognize that this is a PCcard and that it has been mounted
>> onto /dev/ttyS4 as a serial device
>>
>> I am going to look at your web site in a minute
>>
>> Thanks
>
> Interesting, try out some of the things in my how-to article and see what
> you can figure out.
>
> Good luck!
>
> --
> Nick DePetrillo
> Network Security Engineer
> OSHEAN
> PGP Key: http://pgp.mit.edu:11371/pks/lookup?...rch=0x121245B5
>

On Thu, 02 Feb 2006 23:33:01 -0800, Juke wrote:

> Regarding how you made your card work with Gentoo, I was wondering if you
> had a reference to write the commands in your verizon-connect and
> verizon-disconnect scripts. Are those "CONNECT" , "ABORT" , etc commands
> standard or only for your scenario

Those commands are standard AT commands for modems. The Verizon cards were
nothing more than an RF serial modem, so talking to it like a regular
modem, making it dial out and establish a PPP connection was trivial.
However I was not the original author of the connect scripts.

I can use minicom to connect to the virtual serial port of the Verizon
cards (in my case /dev/tts/USB0) and send it AT commands manually and
receive feedback. Try using a terminal program like minicom to connect to
your card's virtual serial port and see if you can hack around. I remember
you said it was recognized as a serial device when you plugged it in.

--
Nick DePetrillo
Network Security Engineer
OSHEAN
PGP Key: http://pgp.mit.edu:11371/pks/lookup?...rch=0x121245B5

Hi there Nicholas

So I have been playing around with the Sony Ericsson GC89 on my
Linux(2.6.15) and I can tell that the card is set as a serial port on
/dev/ttyS4 from dmesg.

But when I do a "cardctl info" , it seems like the cardmgr doesn't properly
identify the card :

"
PRODID_1=""
PRODID_2=""
PRODID_3=""
PRODID_4=""
MANFID=0000,0000
FUNCID=255
PRODID_1=""
PRODID_2=""
PRODID_3=""
PRODID_4=""
MANFID=0000,0000
FUNCID=255
"

But when I use kudzu to probe, I see that the card is sort of recognized as
having a Broadcom vendor ID :

"class: MODEM
bus: PCI
detached: 1
device: ttyS4
driver: unknown
desc: "Broadcom Corporation: Unknown device 4344"
vendorId: 14e4
deviceId: 4344
subVendorId: 18de
subDeviceId: 0003
pciType: 2
pcidom: 0
pcibus: 3
pcidev: 0
pcifn: 1
"
and it is also shown as a class MODEM, which is also the same category
Windows classifies this card as. I also noted that when you first insert
this card into Windows, it initally will see the card as a PCI Serial
Device( before installing drivers) . "lspci" also shows this card as:
" 03:00.1 Serial controller: Broadcom Corporation: Unknown device 4344
(rev 03) "

I have also tried to use minicom to talk to the card in Linux, but it
doesn't respond(like send it some AT commands). It does respond however
using Hyperterminal in Windows

So this is weird, it seems like the cardctl does not really identify the
card completely, and I was wondering if you might have encountered this
problem before when you were working with your KPC650 GPRS card. What kernel
version did you use? I am going to try to upgrade my cardctl and cardmgr.

Thanks

Yours Sincerely,
Ian

"Nicholas DePetrillo" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news(E-Mail Removed)...
> On Thu, 02 Feb 2006 23:33:01 -0800, Juke wrote:
>
>> Regarding how you made your card work with Gentoo, I was wondering if you
>> had a reference to write the commands in your verizon-connect and
>> verizon-disconnect scripts. Are those "CONNECT" , "ABORT" , etc commands
>> standard or only for your scenario
>
> Those commands are standard AT commands for modems. The Verizon cards were
> nothing more than an RF serial modem, so talking to it like a regular
> modem, making it dial out and establish a PPP connection was trivial.
> However I was not the original author of the connect scripts.
>
> I can use minicom to connect to the virtual serial port of the Verizon
> cards (in my case /dev/tts/USB0) and send it AT commands manually and
> receive feedback. Try using a terminal program like minicom to connect to
> your card's virtual serial port and see if you can hack around. I remember
> you said it was recognized as a serial device when you plugged it in.
>
> --
> Nick DePetrillo
> Network Security Engineer
> OSHEAN
> PGP Key: http://pgp.mit.edu:11371/pks/lookup?...rch=0x121245B5
>