| Linus Torvalds | 1da177e | 2005-04-16 15:20:36 -0700 | [diff] [blame] | 1 | |
| 2 | Parallel link cable for Texas Instruments handhelds |
| 3 | =================================================== |
| 4 | |
| 5 | |
| 6 | Author: Romain Lievin |
| 7 | Homepage: http://lpg.ticalc.org/prj_tidev/index.html |
| 8 | |
| 9 | |
| 10 | INTRODUCTION: |
| 11 | |
| 12 | This is a driver for the very common home-made parallel link cable, a cable |
| 13 | designed for connecting TI8x/9x graphing calculators (handhelds) to a computer |
| 14 | or workstation (Alpha, Sparc). Given that driver is built on parport, the |
| 15 | parallel port abstraction layer, this driver is architecture-independent. |
| 16 | |
| 17 | It can also be used with another device plugged on the same port (such as a |
| 18 | ZIP drive). I have a 100MB ZIP and both of them work fine! |
| 19 | |
| 20 | If you need more information, please visit the 'TI drivers' homepage at the URL |
| 21 | above. |
| 22 | |
| 23 | WHAT YOU NEED: |
| 24 | |
| 25 | A TI calculator and a program capable of communicating with your calculator. |
| 26 | |
| 27 | TiLP will work for sure (since I am its developer!). yal92 may be able to use |
| 28 | it by changing tidev for tipar (may require some hacking...). |
| 29 | |
| 30 | HOW TO USE IT: |
| 31 | |
| 32 | You must have first compiled parport support (CONFIG_PARPORT_DEV): either |
| 33 | compiled in your kernel, either as a module. |
| 34 | |
| 35 | Next, (as root): |
| 36 | |
| 37 | modprobe parport |
| 38 | modprobe tipar |
| 39 | |
| 40 | If it is not already there (it usually is), create the device: |
| 41 | |
| 42 | mknod /dev/tipar0 c 115 0 |
| 43 | mknod /dev/tipar1 c 115 1 |
| 44 | mknod /dev/tipar2 c 115 2 |
| 45 | |
| 46 | You will have to set permissions on this device to allow you to read/write |
| 47 | from it: |
| 48 | |
| 49 | chmod 666 /dev/tipar[0..2] |
| 50 | |
| 51 | Now you are ready to run a linking program such as TiLP. Be sure to configure |
| 52 | it properly (RTFM). |
| 53 | |
| 54 | MODULE PARAMETERS: |
| 55 | |
| 56 | You can set these with: modprobe tipar NAME=VALUE |
| 57 | There is currently no way to set these on a per-cable basis. |
| 58 | |
| 59 | NAME: timeout |
| 60 | TYPE: integer |
| 61 | DEFAULT: 15 |
| 62 | DESC: Timeout value in tenth of seconds. If no data is available once this |
| 63 | time has expired then the driver will return with a timeout error. |
| 64 | |
| 65 | NAME: delay |
| 66 | TYPE: integer |
| 67 | DEFAULT: 10 |
| 68 | DESC: Inter-bit delay in micro-seconds. A lower value gives an higher data |
| 69 | rate but makes transmission less reliable. |
| 70 | |
| 71 | These parameters can be changed at run time by any program via ioctl(2) calls |
| 72 | as listed in ./include/linux/ticable.h. |
| 73 | |
| 74 | Rather than write 50 pages describing the ioctl() and so on, it is |
| 75 | perhaps more useful you look at ticables library (dev_link.c) that demonstrates |
| 76 | how to use them, and demonstrates the features of the driver. This is |
| 77 | probably a lot more useful to people interested in writing applications |
| 78 | that will be using this driver. |
| 79 | |
| 80 | QUIRKS/BUGS: |
| 81 | |
| 82 | None. |
| 83 | |
| 84 | HOW TO CONTACT US: |
| 85 | |
| 86 | You can email me at roms@lpg.ticalc.org. Please prefix the subject line |
| 87 | with "TIPAR: " so that I am certain to notice your message. |
| 88 | You can also mail JB at jb@jblache.org. He packaged these drivers for Debian. |
| 89 | |
| 90 | CREDITS: |
| 91 | |
| 92 | The code is based on tidev.c & parport.c. |
| 93 | The driver has been developed independently of Texas Instruments. |