libftdi1-1.1 released and Windows binaries

libftdi1-1.1 has been released on 06-Feb-2014

Main highlights
------------------
* Fix FT232H eeprom suspend pulldown setting (Davide Michelizza)
* Fix FT232H eeprom user area size (Davide Michelizza)
* Improved mingw build (Paul Fertser and Michel Zou)
* C++ wrapper: Get/set functions for USB timeouts (Jochen Sprickerhof)
* Partial support for FT230X (Nathael Pajani)
* New API function: ftdi_eeprom_set_strings() (Nathael Pajani)
* Prevent possible segfault in ftdi_eeprom_decode() (Nathael Pajani)
* Save device release number in eeprom (Jarkko Sonninen)
* Fix "self powered" eeprom flag (Jarkko Sonninen)
* Improved python wrapper (Michel Zou)
* Many buildsystem improvements (Michel Zou and Mike Frysinger)
* See the git history for more changes and fixes


Download:
http://www.intra2net.com/en/developer/libftdi/download/libftdi1-1.1.tar.bz2

GPG signature:
http://www.intra2net.com/en/developer/libftdi/download/libftdi1-1.1.tar.bz2.sig

Full changelog:
http://developer.intra2net.com/git/?p=libftdi;a=blob;f=ChangeLog;hb=HEAD

I provided the Windows development kit download here. This time I have provided both the MinGW.org based 32bit development kit and MinGW-w64 based 32bit/64bit development kit. libusb-1.0.18 is used as the base for the libftdi1-1.1.

Interesting discussions about Linux

http://fossforce.com/2011/08/top-10-things-linux-users-dont-understand/

The post itself is not that interesting and kind of dumb. But the comments sections are much more interesting. The best comment is from "linuxlover" on August 12th, 2011 at 11:05 am.

I use both Windows and Linux and kind of neutral. Windows has many problems. Linux has many problems as well. Linux has many advantages. Windows has many advantages as well.

********* Quote "linuxlover" *****************
Advantages of Linux
1. App bugs will get fixed when a new student takes over from the one that graduated and got a job.
2. The packaging chaos will get fixed, since the Darwinian process works (only needs a few million years).
3. The desktop chaos will get fixed for the same reason.
4. Linux distros will stop competing with each-other and start focusing on Microsoft.
5. Ubuntu’s 80,000 open bugs will make them releasing when ready instead of every 6 months.
6. Instead of dozens of half-finished programs for a given application, there will be 1-2 really excellent ones.
7. Unity may get modified to be effective for monitors over 800 pixels.
8. Compiz may get fixed for high-speed window updates.
9. A serious standards body will develop and enforce sensible standards (packaging, desktop, libraries, binary API, GUI API).
10. If you are having problems, you can choose from hundreds of distros that will have different problems.

I actually use and enjoy Linux, but let’s face the problems honestly.
**********************************************

OpenOCD 0.5.0 release Windows binary download

OpenOCD 0.5.0 has been released. Here is the News.

Source zip archive or tar ball can be downloaded from SourceForge.

Windows binaries (32bit and 64bit, cross build under Linux with MinGW-w64 project's compiler) can be downloaded from Freddie Chopin's website.

You can also use my test build which is native Windows build using 32bit MinGW.org toolchain.

Take note due to GPL licensing reasons, these Windows binaries are linked against libusb-win32 and libftdi and not the proprietary FTDI D2xx library.

libftdi 0.19 and libftdi-1.0 git MinGW binaries download

Here are the unofficial libftdi-0.19 and libftdi-1.0 binaries download.
http://code.google.com/p/picusb/downloads/list

They are cross-built under Linux with MinGW and MinGW-w64. So if you have some difficulties getting them to be built under Windows, you may want to try out the binaries I built.

Python and USB HID Device

(This is my post to pyusb mailing list on 27-April-2011)

Just a summary for the situation.

Firstly you may want to see if you really want to use
a generic HID device, in most cases, you can use
a custom device and then use libusb0.sys or winusb.sys
as the driver under Windows and then use pyusb with it.

Using a custom device will also make it possible to use
pyusb under Mac OS X. Recent Mac OS X makes it
very difficult (or impossible) to detach the kernel HID driver.
In that case, it is not possible to use libusb (0.1 or 1.0)
and thus pyusb with the device.

So if you really want to use pyusb and care about
cross-platfrom, then you should forget about generic
HID device and use a custom device instead.

If you really need to use HID device, there are a few
options.

1) If you only cares about Linux, then you can use
pyusb with no issues. libusb under Linux can detach
the kernel HID driver.

2) If you only care about Windows, you may want
to look at pywinusb.
http://code.google.com/p/pywinusb/

3) If you really want to use pyusb under Windows with the
HID device, you can use libusb-win32 filter driver for
that particular HID device. Please use the latest
libusb-win32 for this purpose. And take note this is
not a recommended solution.

4) If you want to have cross-platform support for the
HID device, then you need to look at HIDAPI and
use the python binding for it. Take note the python
binding for HIDAPI is not mature yet.
http://libusb.6.n5.nabble.com/Opinion-HID-and-Windows-back-end-td3716872.html
http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.comp.python.pyusb.user/749

5) Another option under Windows is to use the HID branch
of the libusb-pbatard git repo or older version of libusb-pbatard
(up to pbr332). This is not recommended as the official stand
of libusb-1.0 admin is not to support HID native backend under
Windows.

libftdi and OpenOCD binary download

libftdi-0.18 and libftdi-1.0 binaries and OpenOCD git binaries download
http://code.google.com/p/picusb/downloads/list

I have uploaded some Windows (32bit and 64bit) binary of libftdi and OpenOCD to my Google Code picusb page. Most of them are cross-built under Linux with MinGW and MinGW-w64. So if you have some difficulties getting them to be built under Windows, you may want to try out the binaries I built.

Acer AOD255 Netbook

Today I bought the Acer Aspire One AOD255 netbook. This is my first netbook. It has the new Atom N550 dual core processor, 1GB of DDR3 RAM (wish it has 2GB), 250GB HDD and integrated graphics. The interesting thing is that it has dual boot options (Windows 7 starter and Android). It cost me SGD519, they throw in 3 freebies, a headphone, a cheap cooling stand with two USB powered fans and a free one year subscription of Norman anti-virus suite.

I was a bit curious about the Android installed. So I boot the default Windows 7 Starter, ran the Acer Android configuration program, then reboot to Android. Apparently either Acer has done a poor job or Android is not really meant for netbooks, I played with the Android installed for about two minutes and I can only say it is really a crap. It can connect to the wireless network but the browsing speed is rather slow. It is also very awkward to use and took me a while to figure out that ESC key is the key to close an application. So I was back to Windows 7 Starter after two minutes. So far I think none of the Instant On Linux option installed in the netbooks (or some motherboard) are worth the time to play with. But this Acer Android thingy seems to be quite bad. But maybe Acer will update the bundled Android and I will play it a bit more later.

The first thing to do under Windows is of course to remove the trial software packages (McAfee Antivirus and Norton Online Backup). Then after installing some essential software (Firefox, Chrome, Microsoft Security Essential, MinGW, etc), I am in business. I chose not to use Norman since I believe Security Essential takes less resource. I mainly use Firefox but I might want to use Chrome a bit more on this netbook. MinGW installation took quite a bit of time (using mingw-get-inst GUI) but finally it was okay.

The netbook is not that fast but still can run Windows 7 adequately. I actually upgraded to Windows 7 Ultimate and it still runs fine. The upgrade process is rather long. Last time it took me much less time to upgrade from Home Premium to Ultimate on the Asus K40ID notebook.

Right now I am thinking I will use this netbook mainly for internet browsing and a bit of software testing (libusb-win32, libusb-1.0 and others).

TDM64 and MinGW-w64

I was trying to find a good distribution of MinGW-w64 under Windows (32bit and 64bit). I think TDM64 seems to be quite good now.

Website and download: http://tdm-gcc.tdragon.net/

Special features:
1) It runs under 32bit (x86) and 64bit Windows (x64)
2) It is multilib enabled, which means that it can produce both 32bit and 64bit binary. The default is 64bit.
3) It is a native 64bit compiler, at least under Windows x64.
4) Easy to be installed -- it has an installer.

MinGW Win32 installation to build libusb-1.0 Windows Backend

libusb-1.0 Windows backend currently supports Cygwin, MinGW and MinGW-w64, MSVC and WDK as the building tool. Cygwin, MSVC and WDK are more straightforward to install under Windows. But MinGW and MinGW-w64 are less straightforward.

One way to solve this issue is to use cross-compile under Linux. Leading Linux distros have MinGW and even MinGW-w64 packages. And the auto-tools (automake, autoconf, libtool) are normally installed under Linux. For MinGW-w64 build, one think to take note is that you probably need to update the libtool to 2.2.8 and later. Ubuntu 10.04 still ships an older version of libtool which does not recognize 64bit library properly.

Native build with MinGW/MSys from MinGW.org is really not that difficult once you have the base system and auto-tools installed. Pete Batard has a blog entry talking about the setup.
http://pete-tech.blogspot.com/2010/07/installing-mingw-w32-on-windows-system.html

I just checked again and now it seems MinGW people has recognized the problem and come up with a new automatic installer for the MinGW/Msys base system installation. The name is mingw-get. It is currently in alpha but rather usable. I just used it to set up a new MinGW/MSys base system under Windows 7 32bit.

mingw-get can be downloaded from MinGW Sourceforge site.
http://sourceforge.net/projects/mingw/files/

Once you have the base system, you need to install auto-tools for MinGW (not the MSys version). The auto-tools may need some MSys dependency packages as well (eg: perl, crypt, etc). After that, it is quite simple to build libusb-1.0 Windows backend.

As for MinGW-w64 64bit build, it is similar. You can download the 32bit MSys base system and MinGW-w64 64bit Windows binary snapshots from its Sourceforge website.
http://sourceforge.net/projects/mingw-w64/files/

Alternatively, you can get 64bit binary from the following website (only for 64bit Windows).
http://www.drangon.org/mingw/

After that, you still need to get 32bit auto-tools installed. I recommend you to use the ones from MinGW.org and not the ones from MinGW-w64 sites as I have encountered problems with them.

If you are more adventurous, you can try the multilib option to build 32bit and 64bit using the same toolchain. Pete has a blog entry for this. I have not tried this and will probably not try this myself.
http://pete-tech.blogspot.com/2010/07/compiling-mingw-w64-with-multilib-on.html

There is an existing package WPG System64 which include multilib based MinGW-w64 and all the tools (and more) to build libusb-1.0 Windows backend. However, we found out that the MinGW-w64 compiler included is a bit outdated that the output is not compatible with the current MinGW-w64 compile. So it is not recommended any more.

libftdi-0.18 and libftdi-1.0 Win32 and Win64 binaries download

http://code.google.com/p/picusb/downloads/list

I have uploaded some Windows (32bit and 64bit) binary of libftdi and libftdi-1.0 to my Google Code picusb page. Most of them are cross-built under Linux with MinGW and MinGW-w64. So if you have some difficulties getting libftdi or libftdi-1.0 to be built under Windows, you may want to try out the binaries I built.

Windows 7 32bit installed

Last week I installed Windows 7 32bit Ultimate on my two-year old Acer M1641 desktop, it was a smooth process. The only unrecognized device of the original PC after the Win7 installation was a mysterious "co-processor" device. After installation of the Nvidia NForce chipset driver everything on the original PC was recognized. The added old Compro X50 PCI TV/FM card was also not recognized. Luckily Compro provides the driver and necessary applications for this 5-year old product.

There was a glitch, after the installation, the grub bootloader is gone, only Vista and Win7 are shown in the Windows bootloader. So I have to recover the grub bootloader so that I can boot into various Linux versions (Ubuntu 9.10 32bit, Ubuntu 10.04 64bit and Arch Linux).

I am now using Windows 7 Home Premium 64bit for my Asus laptop. Same as the experiences there, I do not see too much differences between Vista and Win 7. Being a new installation with less "junks", it seems to be a bit faster.

Other than that, one of the major difference is the XP mode. The nice thing about XP mode is that now it supports USB. This is not a fast PC to run the virtual XP mode since it lacks the Hardware Assisted Virtualization Technology feature and the amount of RAM is not that big. Still allocating 512MB to the XP mode seems to let the virtual XP run relatively smooth. But this is just a test and I do not really need XP or miss XP.

Overall, the first impression of Win 7 is positive. But heh my first impression with Vista was also not bad even though many people have negative views on Vista.

libusb-win32 project has two new admins

Stephan Meyer has kindly added Travis and I to the project admin team of libusb-win32 project.
https://sourceforge.net/projects/libusb-win32/

Travis is the developer of libusbdotnet, a great project which should be of interests to the users of libusb-win32.
https://sourceforge.net/projects/libusbdotnet/

Travis will mainly handle the code development and I will mainly handle the support/testing side.

We think libusb-win32 project can still be relevant now and we intend to further the development of libusb-win32.

One of the initial goal will be to solve the existing bugs especially the bugs with the filter driver which has caused some big problems under Vista and Windows 7.

We hope to get your continuing support. Please use the mailing list to share you suggestions to the project.
https://sourceforge.net/mail/?group_id=78138

New Asus Notebook with Windows 7 x64

Today I bought a low/medium-end notebook: Asus K40ID series, Core 2 Duo 6750 CPU (2.1GHz), Nvidia Geforce GT320M graphics card (VRAM 1GB), 14" HD LED Backlight (1366x768), 320GB HDD, 2GB RAM, 8x DVD RW, 802.11n Wifi and Bluetooth. The OS is Windows 7 Home Premium 64bit. I hope this 64bit thingy will not cause big problem for me due to the potential driver issues. The good thing about Asus is the 2 year parts and labor warranty by default.

I do not trust the quality of notebooks by any vendor. The first notebook I bought is from Dell (Inspiron 600M) early 2003 running XP Home, it broke down twice in the first year. Then it kept alive until 2008 with a problem of the on-board keyboard controller (random key coming out). I still keep it but it is useless now.

The second one I bought is Compaq Presario V3619AU from HP/Compaq in Dec 2008. It is still alive but was sent back twice for repair (after running quite well for 1.5 years) due to overheating issues. The first time they change the AMD CPU, the second time they changed the motherboard. But it still has the overheating issues from time to time. It is covered by 3 year warranty as I paid for it.

The notebook at work is a 4-year old Dell Latitude D610 running XP Pro. It is not bad, Dell's business notebook seems to be much better than the consumer ones. With 2GB RAM and XP Pro, it runs quite well, not very fast but acceptable, even after 4 years. The HDD is a bit small at 80 GB. The battery life is of course quite short now. The accessories are quite bad though as I have changed the dock once and the external keyboard once.

As for Windows 7, my first impression is that it is not much different from Vista (my Acer M6141 Desktop is running Vista Home Premium 32bit). Unlike many people, I have very few problems with Vista. It works quite well on my low-end Acer M1641 Desktop. I feel that Windows 7 with this faster Asus notebook is not at all faster than my Vista desktop.

Asus does installed some junks like the 60 day trial version of Office 2007 and the Anti Virus package and some other things, almost exactly the same thing as the Acer desktop when I bought it. So the first thing to do is to uninstall these two packages. Normally I would install the AVG Anti Virus Free version as the anti-virus, anti-spyware package. This time I choose to install Microsoft Security Essential (just to see if it consumes less memory). I consider myself a pro-user of Windows and normally I do not need to worry about Virus and Spyware. If Microsoft Security Essential proves to be inadequate, then probably I will go back to AVG Anti-Virus Free.

WinUSB related resources

WinUSB related resources:

Microsoft resource:
http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/connect/usb/winusb_howto.mspx
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa476426.aspx

Jan Axelson's website
http://www.lvr.com/winusb.htm

libusb-1.0 Windows backend
http://www.libusb.org/wiki/windows_backend

libusbdotnet supports WinUSB, libusb-1.0 and libusb-win32 0.1
http://libusbdotnet.sourceforge.net/

WinUSB component
http://asyncop.com/MTnPDirEnum.aspx?treeviewPath=[o]+Open-Source\WinUSB+Component

WinUSBDotNet
http://code.google.com/p/winusbnet/

pywinusb: python wrapper
http://code.google.com/p/pywinusb/

Microchip Forum thread:
http://www.microchip.com/forums/tm.aspx?m=264046

picusb Google code page updated

http://code.google.com/p/picusb/

I have created this page quite some time ago. But I did not put anything inside. Now I will start to put some contents inside, mainly related to some open source codes related to USB PIC MCUs.

Some files for download:
http://code.google.com/p/picusb/downloads/list

libusb 1.0 Windows backend reaches pre-release mode

http://old.nabble.com/Announcing-code-freeze---pre-release-mode-for-the-Windows-backend-td27657981.html

Pete Batard announced the news and Pete Stuge has come out a good integration plan. Hopefully the Windows backend will sooon be integrated into the main tree.

At the same time, I think if you are interested in the Windows backend, you can already try it. It mostly works for me. The only issue I have right now is the HID backend where feature reports do not seem to work.

libusb 1.0 Windows Backend

Here is a new development on the libusb 1.0 for Windows front now that libusb 1.0 already works under Linux and Mac OS X. Now the libusb-winusb branch (using WinUSB backend, good for XP, Vista and Windows 7, 32bit or 64bit) reached beta status. This may be a good alternative to the libusb-win32 project.

The benefits of this WinUSB backend is that it will work for 64bit Windows like Vista and Windows 7. The WinUSB backend will not support isochronous transfer. So it is not a complement replacement of libusb-win32 yet.

libusb-winusb will be integrated to the main libusb-1.0 tree (using git). Once it is mature, I think it will be very good replacement for libusb-win32. More backend will probably be added, like the HID backend (HID support) and the libusb-win32 device driver backend (isochronous support, Windows 2k support). When that happens, it can replace libusb-win32 (0.1 stable branch and the 1.0 development branch).

More information about libusb 1.0 Windows backend:
http://libusb.org/wiki/windows_backend

Vista SP2 installed

Just installed Vista SP2 but I did not notice any differences yet.

You can either use Windows updates or use the download here.
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/dd262148.aspx

libusb related wrappers or bindings

Most of the following libusb wrapper/binding work with both libusb and libusb-win32 0.1 version. As far as I know, there are no libusb wrapper/bindings yet for the new libusb-1.0 (currently only Linux and Mac OS X) or Openusb (currently only Linux and Solaris).

Python -- pyusb
http://pyusb.berlios.de/

Python -- bitpim libusb wrapper with swig
http://bitpim.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/bitpim/trunk/bitpim/src/native/usb/

Perl -- Device::USB
http://code.google.com/p/perl-device-usb/
http://search.cpan.org/~gwadej/Device-USB-0.29/lib/Device/USB.pm

Ruby -- ruby-usb
http://www.a-k-r.org/ruby-usb/

Java -- libusbjava
http://libusbjava.sourceforge.net/wp/

FreePascal -- fpc_libusb
http://www.sciencetronics.com/download/fpc_libusb.tgz

C# and DotNet: LibUsbDotNet
http://sourceforge.net/projects/libusbdotnet/

Lua -- lualibusb
http://luaforge.net/projects/lualibusb/

IE 8.0, Compatibility Worse Than Firefox?

I've been using IE8 under Windows Vista for a while and until recently I have not seen any major compatibility issues with websites other than Sourceforge. There are warnings from Sourceforge that it is better to upgraded to newer version of IE or Firefox. But my version of IE 8 is the latest.

Today, I happened to read Linux Today and it has a link to Earthweb (part of internet.com) and IE8 is the only browser which has problem with it. Firefox 3.08 is happy. Google Chrome 1.0.154.53 is happy.

http://itmanagement.earthweb.com/osrc/article.php/3815766/Can-GNOME-Regain-the-Evolutionary-Advantage-over-KDE.htm