Date: Mon, 10 Mar 2003 18:24:51 -0500 From: Paul Chvostek <paul@it.ca> To: freebsd-hardware@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: X-10 / xtend : what serial port for /dev/tw0 ? Message-ID: <20030310182451.A60587@mail.it.ca> In-Reply-To: <20030310162102.A26034@mail.it.ca>; from paul@it.ca on Mon, Mar 10, 2003 at 04:21:02PM -0500 References: <20030310162102.A26034@mail.it.ca>
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I've received some wisdom in response to my original post, and have done some additional research. I now know that the TW523 normally talks to a parallel port, and my use of the serial port was probably wrong.... But to be clear on this, my problem is with the device that sits between the RJ12 and the PC. The TW523 is in the wall socket, and the RJ12 cable connects the TW523 to this blue port adapter that is DB25 *female* (same gender as tha parallel port on the PC). A straight-through DB25 gender changer does *not* make things work, and if you're following this, I'm sure you're wondering just what this blue adapter is. So was I, so I took it apart. The inside is glopped together with hard plastic, so I can't take it fully apart without breaking it ... but from what I can see, there's a small circuit board with resistors, diodes and at least one capacitor on it. Pins 2 and 3 on the DB25 are in fact shorted together with solder, and pins 4, 5, 6, and 19 connect to the circuit board. So whatever this is, it wants to talk to a serial port. The unit has no label or brand identifier, and except for the fancy plastic goo and professional-quality circuit board, it appears to have been assembled from generic parts. The printer circuit embedded inside has no visible screen printing, and when plugged into a serial port through a serial tester, I get lights (as I would expect) on TD, RD, RTS and DTR. With pins 2 and 3 shorted, the unit acts as a serial loopback, so I'm assuming it would communicate with the TW523 using RTS and DTR. It obviously won't work with FreeBSD's built-in tw driver, but has anyone ever heard of something like this? Am I dealing with someone's custom electronics project, or was this thing ever a "product"? Perhaps a kit? Any advice would be greatly appreciated. :-) On Mon, Mar 10, 2003 at 04:21:02PM -0500, Paul Chvostek wrote: > > Hiya. > > I've got a TW-523 plugged in to cuaa0. I've added tw0 to the kernel, > and I can run /usr/libexec/xtend, but I can't figure out how to tell the > system what serial port on which the tw0 device can find the hardware. > > Running xtend and issuing the command `xten A AllLightsOn` logs: > > Mon Mar 10 16:08:28 2003: /usr/libexec/xtend [665] started > Mon Mar 10 16:08:28 2003: /dev/tw0 successfully opened > Mon Mar 10 16:09:27 2003: Accepting user connection > Mon Mar 10 16:09:27 2003: Transmission error (packet [A AllLightsOn]:2). ... > Mon Mar 10 16:09:30 2003: Closing user connection -- Paul Chvostek <paul@it.ca> Operations / Abuse / Whatever it.canada, hosting and development http://www.it.ca/ To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hardware" in the body of the message
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