Thuraya XT satphone - what USB chip is used?

I am trying to make it work under win8...

It isn't a Prolific 2303 and it isn't an FTDI FT232 or similar...

Win8 does notice it was plugged in (it beeps) but nothing new (that I can see) appears under Control Panel / Devices.

I would expect a COM port with a Hayes compatible modem behind it. That is what their older models do. The old 7100 is a straight RS232 Hayes modem, but the XT is USB only.

The modem has a config for two things: Modem and USB. Neither makes any difference, but the 1st one suggests that perhaps it does have an RS232 interface...

Reply to
John-Smith
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You might want to plug it into a Linux box (boot a Linux live CD image or USB stick on your current machine, if you wish) and do an "lsusb" and "lsusb -v". This should show you plenty of information about the device characteristics.

An increasing number of devices these days are publishing a CDC (Communications Device Class) endpoint... behaves a lot like a modem or serial port but there's no concept of baud rate.

Reply to
David Platt

snipped-for-privacy@coop.radagast.org (David Platt) wrote

Interesting. Is there a Linux image which can go onto a USB flash stick and "just work"?

Years ago I had something like that on a boot CD. But for this experiment I obviously need something much more current.

One unix user reports that the Thuraya phone worked straight off, detecting it as a Hayhes modem and with a popup asking for the APN! Somehow it must have assumed that this is not a DUN device but a GPRS/3G device, knew the number to dial is *99#, and just needed the APN and the login/pwd.

Reply to
John-Smith

Quite a few Linux distributions come, or are compatible with USB-stick imaging programs..

formatting link
has pointers and instructions, including a "Universal USB Installer" app for Windows which can image many different sorts of bootable image (Linux and otherwise) onto a USB stick. Ubuntu seems to recommend this installer as the best way to get a bootable Ubuntu stick.

formatting link
has live-install images for CDs and USB sticks.

Naturally, such imaged USB sticks will only boot on systems whose BIOSes possess this capability... which is most modern ones, I believe.

Reply to
David Platt

There's tons of microcontrollers on the market with USB ports. If you're building 1000 a year or more of something it's probably worth the trouble to make that work rather than wasting money and board space on a separate chip.

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Tim Wescott 
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Reply to
Tim Wescott

Ubuntu does that very well. I'm sure there's others, but I'm only familiar with Ubuntu.

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Tim Wescott 
Control system and signal processing consulting 
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Reply to
Tim Wescott

Tim Wescott wrote

Yes, but equally the equipment manufacturer is not going to be writing their own windows drivers for any of these, because that is an absolute pig of a job.

I wonder which of these are the main players?

I will try that USB monitoring program, from the FTDI website. I know FTDI - we use them at work. Good chips and a good company.

Reply to
John-Smith

You could implement a CDC class device, and use the standard drivers.

Reply to
Arlet Ottens

This is a really useful thread to me, because I didn't know nuthing about this CDC device class stuff -- does Windows automatically try to hook it up to a COM port so you can just pretend its serial, or is there some other API that you have to use?

I'm currently putting an FTDI chip into something because an FT230X is smaller than the crystal that the microprocessor requires if you go with USB, but a secondary reason was not wanting to mess with programming USB in the chip.

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Tim Wescott 
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Reply to
Tim Wescott

Assuming we are talking about the CDC ACM interface, there are a couple of things you need to be aware of:

1) I've seen reports the Windows CDC ACM drivers are not as good as they should be. However, be aware that's hearsay: I have no experience with the Windows CDC ACM drivers. (Also, those reports were about WinXP IIRC; I don't recall seeing anything about Windows 7). 2) There's no way for the CDC ACM device to communicate the CTS status back to the USB host; it's not part of the CDC ACM specification.

Microchip have a MCP2200 IC which implements the CDC ACM protocol; they handled this problem by implementing hardware flow control on the IC itself.

Only you can decide if this is a issue for you. :-)

Simon.

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Simon Clubley, clubley@remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP 
Microsoft: Bringing you 1980s technology to a 21st century world
Reply to
Simon Clubley

Since the USB protocol has its own flow control, the lack of CTS shouldn't be too bad, especially when you integrate the USB functionality on the same controller that handles the data.

Reply to
Arlet Ottens

If I did this I'd just be removing an FT230X and plumbing those wires straight to a chip that can handle USB.

The thing that really decided me on using the FT230X on this board rather than the on-board resources of the STM32F303 were that the FT230X uses about 80% of the board area of a 7mm x 5mm crystal, and the only thing driving the requirement to have a crystal was the need for USB.

It's way space-constrained -- I'm down to 2.5 postage stamps, and I'd certainly be happier at 1.5 or less.

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Tim Wescott 
Wescott Design Services 
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Reply to
Tim Wescott

There are some crystal-less STM32 parts IIRC

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John Devereux
Reply to
John Devereux

Sorry, I meant parts designed to work with USB without a crystal!

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John Devereux
Reply to
John Devereux

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