1 LINUX DRIVERS FOR BAYCOM MODEMS 2 3 Thomas M. Sailer, HB9JNX/AE4WA, <sailer@ife.ee.ethz.ch> 4 5!!NEW!! (04/98) The drivers for the baycom modems have been split into 6separate drivers as they did not share any code, and the driver 7and device names have changed. 8 9This document describes the Linux Kernel Drivers for simple Baycom style 10amateur radio modems. 11 12The following drivers are available: 13 14baycom_ser_fdx: 15 This driver supports the SER12 modems either full or half duplex. 16 Its baud rate may be changed via the `baud' module parameter, 17 therefore it supports just about every bit bang modem on a 18 serial port. Its devices are called bcsf0 through bcsf3. 19 This is the recommended driver for SER12 type modems, 20 however if you have a broken UART clone that does not have working 21 delta status bits, you may try baycom_ser_hdx. 22 23baycom_ser_hdx: 24 This is an alternative driver for SER12 type modems. 25 It only supports half duplex, and only 1200 baud. Its devices 26 are called bcsh0 through bcsh3. Use this driver only if baycom_ser_fdx 27 does not work with your UART. 28 29baycom_par: 30 This driver supports the par96 and picpar modems. 31 Its devices are called bcp0 through bcp3. 32 33baycom_epp: 34 This driver supports the EPP modem. 35 Its devices are called bce0 through bce3. 36 This driver is work-in-progress. 37 38The following modems are supported: 39 40ser12: This is a very simple 1200 baud AFSK modem. The modem consists only 41 of a modulator/demodulator chip, usually a TI TCM3105. The computer 42 is responsible for regenerating the receiver bit clock, as well as 43 for handling the HDLC protocol. The modem connects to a serial port, 44 hence the name. Since the serial port is not used as an async serial 45 port, the kernel driver for serial ports cannot be used, and this 46 driver only supports standard serial hardware (8250, 16450, 16550) 47 48par96: This is a modem for 9600 baud FSK compatible to the G3RUH standard. 49 The modem does all the filtering and regenerates the receiver clock. 50 Data is transferred from and to the PC via a shift register. 51 The shift register is filled with 16 bits and an interrupt is signalled. 52 The PC then empties the shift register in a burst. This modem connects 53 to the parallel port, hence the name. The modem leaves the 54 implementation of the HDLC protocol and the scrambler polynomial to 55 the PC. 56 57picpar: This is a redesign of the par96 modem by Henning Rech, DF9IC. The modem 58 is protocol compatible to par96, but uses only three low power ICs 59 and can therefore be fed from the parallel port and does not require 60 an additional power supply. Furthermore, it incorporates a carrier 61 detect circuitry. 62 63EPP: This is a high-speed modem adaptor that connects to an enhanced parallel port. 64 Its target audience is users working over a high speed hub (76.8kbit/s). 65 66eppfpga: This is a redesign of the EPP adaptor. 67 68 69 70All of the above modems only support half duplex communications. However, 71the driver supports the KISS (see below) fullduplex command. It then simply 72starts to send as soon as there's a packet to transmit and does not care 73about DCD, i.e. it starts to send even if there's someone else on the channel. 74This command is required by some implementations of the DAMA channel 75access protocol. 76 77 78The Interface of the drivers 79 80Unlike previous drivers, these drivers are no longer character devices, 81but they are now true kernel network interfaces. Installation is therefore 82simple. Once installed, four interfaces named bc{sf,sh,p,e}[0-3] are available. 83sethdlc from the ax25 utilities may be used to set driver states etc. 84Users of userland AX.25 stacks may use the net2kiss utility (also available 85in the ax25 utilities package) to convert packets of a network interface 86to a KISS stream on a pseudo tty. There's also a patch available from 87me for WAMPES which allows attaching a kernel network interface directly. 88 89 90Configuring the driver 91 92Every time a driver is inserted into the kernel, it has to know which 93modems it should access at which ports. This can be done with the setbaycom 94utility. If you are only using one modem, you can also configure the 95driver from the insmod command line (or by means of an option line in 96/etc/modprobe.d/*.conf). 97 98Examples: 99 modprobe baycom_ser_fdx mode="ser12*" iobase=0x3f8 irq=4 100 sethdlc -i bcsf0 -p mode "ser12*" io 0x3f8 irq 4 101 102Both lines configure the first port to drive a ser12 modem at the first 103serial port (COM1 under DOS). The * in the mode parameter instructs the driver to use 104the software DCD algorithm (see below). 105 106 insmod baycom_par mode="picpar" iobase=0x378 107 sethdlc -i bcp0 -p mode "picpar" io 0x378 108 109Both lines configure the first port to drive a picpar modem at the 110first parallel port (LPT1 under DOS). (Note: picpar implies 111hardware DCD, par96 implies software DCD). 112 113The channel access parameters can be set with sethdlc -a or kissparms. 114Note that both utilities interpret the values slightly differently. 115 116 117Hardware DCD versus Software DCD 118 119To avoid collisions on the air, the driver must know when the channel is 120busy. This is the task of the DCD circuitry/software. The driver may either 121utilise a software DCD algorithm (options=1) or use a DCD signal from 122the hardware (options=0). 123 124ser12: if software DCD is utilised, the radio's squelch should always be 125 open. It is highly recommended to use the software DCD algorithm, 126 as it is much faster than most hardware squelch circuitry. The 127 disadvantage is a slightly higher load on the system. 128 129par96: the software DCD algorithm for this type of modem is rather poor. 130 The modem simply does not provide enough information to implement 131 a reasonable DCD algorithm in software. Therefore, if your radio 132 feeds the DCD input of the PAR96 modem, the use of the hardware 133 DCD circuitry is recommended. 134 135picpar: the picpar modem features a builtin DCD hardware, which is highly 136 recommended. 137 138 139 140Compatibility with the rest of the Linux kernel 141 142The serial driver and the baycom serial drivers compete 143for the same hardware resources. Of course only one driver can access a given 144interface at a time. The serial driver grabs all interfaces it can find at 145startup time. Therefore the baycom drivers subsequently won't be able to 146access a serial port. You might therefore find it necessary to release 147a port owned by the serial driver with 'setserial /dev/ttyS# uart none', where 148# is the number of the interface. The baycom drivers do not reserve any 149ports at startup, unless one is specified on the 'insmod' command line. Another 150method to solve the problem is to compile all drivers as modules and 151leave it to kmod to load the correct driver depending on the application. 152 153The parallel port drivers (baycom_par, baycom_epp) now use the parport subsystem 154to arbitrate the ports between different client drivers. 155 156vy 73s de 157Tom Sailer, sailer@ife.ee.ethz.ch 158hb9jnx @ hb9w.ampr.org 159