ASIX USB to Ethernet

[jwillis84]

(2014-06-24 10:17)jpwise Wrote:  Hey guys, did anything ever eventuate from this? Looking at much the same problem with the new notebook machines coming out sans onboard NIC.
Co-incidentally the adapters I've just ordered in for some of the PE based work are also ASIX 88772 based.

Appreciate it's an old thread, but still looks to be the most recent on the subject, and covered the subject reasonably thoroughly.

Thx.
Jp.

I looked at it pretty seriously for several months, but then my job had me changing the Operating Systems I was supporting (at the moment) and I lost interest.

I continued to work on the problem from a different perspective. (Windows 7/ OSX). I infrequently post to a blog here: http://www.johnwillis.com
on 4/2014 posted an entry on getting PXE over Ethernet to work with hardware in a Dell XPS laptop.

The summary is, the BIOS needs to have [both] a USB chipset unique driver to start that bus and then a BIOS driver for the specific USB dongle plugged into the BUS. After that the OS needs to be able to reinitialize both during and after installation.

Since there are now [three] USB chipset styles based on USB 1.0, USB 2.0 and USB 3.0 and not all dongle hardware worked with each. The problem became one of many and just got very complicated.

I'm not sure the problem cannot be solved.. but it just looked more and more like there would be a lot of desupported [hardware wise] dead alleys.

I will say the combination of SMSC and the available USB chipsets looks the most universal for USB 2.0 and the RTL8183 the most universal for USB 3.0

http://www.johnwillis.com/2014_03_01_archive.html

There is a lot to take in, one legacy USB 2.0 port seems to be included with most hardware for backwards supporting provisoning, and its often hard to identify which port that is, the rest will be USB 3.0 ports.

Provisoning at USB 2.0 speeds is often practically limited to 100 Mb/s

Provisioning at USB 3.0 speeds is often practically limited to 1000 Mb/s

One of the most practical scenarios, even for installing Linux, might be to use Macrium with a WinPE based recovery ISO, CD or usb/disk which leverages WinPE 2.0 or 3.0 to get USB 2.0 or USB 3.0 support for laying down a captured raw partition with the Linux install image that you need.. then booting from that to complete the installation.. but its just a random thought. If your not that familiar with Windows TFTP or Serv-U or WDS.. or Netboot on OSX for that matter a pure Linux path to installation might need more time to work out. I only mention this path because it has worked for me.. i.e it is proven.

I maintain a keen interest in this topic.. but really have no more to contribute at the moment.

I'd really like to write a Universal BIOS stack for supporting 1.0, 2.0 and 3.0 but Linux isn't my full time job at present.