Re: [hylafax-users] MT9234ZBA-USB and Ubuntu 10.04 (Lucid)

[Lee Howard <faxguy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Jim Nikelski wrote:
> (6) sadly, the patches included with the MT9234ZBA-USB were created in
> 2008, and are out-of-date (i.e. poorly written udev rules, use of the
> old (no longer used) hotplug system, etc) [bad]
>   

It's unfortunate that the patches were not submitted by the manufacturer 
to the Linux kernel development team for inclusion into the kernel 
proper.  If that had been done then the maintenance would be 
"self-administered" by the kernel developers going forward.

> (7) an attempt to merge the MTS patches with the current driver source
> results in patch errors.  Manually merging somebody else's old driver
> patches is beyond my pay-grade, so the kernel module cannot be
> rebuilt. [bad]
>   

I believe that this is a task for the manufacturer.


> I suppose that as the world moves away from
> serial ports, an increasing number of modems are going to be USB ...
>   

I assume by "serial ports" you mean external serial ports (the DB9 or 
DB25 kind), because even the USB device has a "serial port" that it 
provides to the system in order to access the modem.  So your statement 
here is that the world is moving away from DB9/DB25 connectors to USB 
connectors, and I suspect that this is true, although it's very 
inexpensive to just purchase a PCI/PCIe serial port card and still have 
the DB9/DB25 interfacing... OR to use a PCI/PCIe serial modem.

> so Linux distros are going to need to cope with these devices (and
> manufacturers are going to have to supply current drivers

I don't mean to belittle their efforts at all, but Linux distros 
themselves don't do much in the way of coping with these devices.  The 
coping with devices is more a function of the Linux kernel developers 
working with manufacturers or with those who are very motivated in 
seeing a manufacturer's products supported.

Manufacturers tend to be motivated by business interests, and it's 
difficult for manufacturers to be motivated by the relatively slim 
profits to be made in selling USB modems to Linux fax users.  
Manufacturers have just-as-easily dismissed the Linux community to avoid 
needing to develop solid Linux drivers.  One only needs to look at 
Conexant/Linuxant fax support in Linux to see what I mean.

> Help? Suggestions?

Use a Linux distribution version that works with the manufacturer's 
patches or distributed driver module OR get a different modem.

Thanks,

Lee.


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