ASIX USB to Ethernet

[jwillis84]

(2014-09-09 06:36)tohtoris Wrote:  Hi, just a quick reply

(2014-09-08 17:31)jwillis84 Wrote:  Currently the driver will not recognize your device and load.

The line above says your device id should be:

USB_ROM(0x17ef, 0x7203, "asix", "Lenovo U2L 100-Y1", 0),

In the ipxe/src/drivers/usb/net/usb/asix.c source code file.

The USB_ROM strings are used to "recognize" a device that is connected to the USB host controller.

I tried making the following change by myself to src/drivers/net/usb/asix.c

Code:

static struct usb_device_id asix_88772_ids[] = {
        USB_ROM(0x2001, 0x3c05, "asix", "DLink DUB-E100", 0),
        USB_ROM(0x0b95, 0x772a, "asix", "ASIX AX88772A", 0),
        USB_ROM(0x17ef, 0x7203, "asix", "Lenovo U2L 100-Y1", 0),
};

Maybe I added the string to a wrong place or something else also needs changes, but with this modification I still got same results. I+ ll take a look at this again later.

By the way here's another asix adapter for you from my colleques desk

Code:

[333676.600058] usb 1-7: new high-speed USB device number 7 using ehci-pci
[333676.738255] usb 1-7: New USB device found, idVendor=0b95, idProduct=1790
[333676.738263] usb 1-7: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=3
[333676.738267] usb 1-7: Product: AX88179
[333676.738271] usb 1-7: Manufacturer: ASIX Elec. Corp.
[333676.738274] usb 1-7: SerialNumber: 00000000000241
[333677.170272] ax88179_178a 1-7:1.0 eth1: register 'ax88179_178a' at usb-0000:00:1d.7-7, ASIX AX88179 USB 3.0 Gigabit Ethernet, 1a:2b:3c:4d:62:f3
[333677.172493] usbcore: registered new interface driver ax88179_178a

I just added the same and did a git push, but if you've already tried it then perhaps something else isn't working.

Lenovo has a long forum thread on PXE booting with this Adapter here: http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/X-Series-Thi...977/page/2

One of the most striking things is they mention [be sure its plugged into the USB 2.0 port]

Its kind of standard practice these days to make laptops/desktops with lots of USB3.0 ports and with exactly one USB2.0 port.

USB goes by different symbols and names to indicate USB speed type

USB 1.1 Full Speed (FS)
USB 2.0 High Speed (HS)
USB 3.0 Super Speed (SS)

And sometimes they mark the ports with tiny lettering you almost need a bright light and magnifying glass to see.

Most commonly they mark the USB3.0 ports with tiny "ss" letters and leave one port totally [unmarked] that would be the USB2.0 port and its intended only for provisioning the laptop.

Sometimes All of the USB3.0 ports merely have a "dot" and the one without a dot is the USB2.0 port.

What your looking for is a [unique] port that stands out as "different" from all of the others.. that will be the one USB2.0 port for PXE Booting.

In my experience, right handed people tend to plug a wireless mouse or external keyboard into the [upper right hand side] of the laptop, and that "tends" to be the USB2.0 port.. on Desktops it gets even "weirder" as they play with unusual colors and and stickers.. there is no standard.

Also you usually have to "activate" Legacy BIOS and PXE booting in the BIOS due to a strange United States Presidential order which made it a violation to sell desktops to the US Government with PXE "enabled" by default in the BIOS.. I think it was under George Bush and they were worried about malware infecting machines when they are first unwrapped and booted up.. since that time I've seen a lot of systems defaulted to "PXE disabled". And around the same time F12 became the default for selecting Boot options manually at boot up. Now its sort of a pseudo standard for any company that hopes to sells PCs to the US Government.

Also UEFI really doesn't play nice with PXE BIOS routines.. I know there is a lot of current work to get that working.. and I've seen some nice menus come of it.. but its been flaky as can be. Just enable BIOS Legacy support if you can.

The AX88179 is a USB3.0 adapter and I'm pretty sure it just won't work in a USB2.0 port, but you can try. And as I've said there isn't a xHCI host controller driver currently available for iPXE.

There is a slim chance it will work simply because it shares heritage with the AX88772 and AX88178 but I would be surprised if it did. We're talking about jumping about six years in hardware technology.. even motherboards change quite a bit in that time.

[Just a quick clarification]

The current iPXE USB support has USB host drivers for UHCI and OHCI and seem to work with EHCI that covers USB1.1 and USB2.0 ports because those ports will be attached inside the laptop to host controller hardware that iPXE can load a driver for and look for things attached to those ports.

The current iPXE USB support does not have a USB host driver for xHCI, so it will not load a driver to use the USB3.0 ports [at all] anything attached to a USB3.0 port will not even be detected. (unless) the USB3.0 host controller can fall back to emulating a USB2.0 host controller.. which I strongly doubt. I could be wrong, I just can't prove this yet.

But if you can get the USB Ethernet adapter plugged into a USB2.0 port it should work.

My current focus is on deriving an xHCI host controller driver for iPXE.. but it may take some time.

Here is a handy guide to the Chipsets and their USB version/speed:

http://www.asix.com.tw/download.php?sub=...ItemID=131