Re: Getting Backpack USB drives to work - looking for lost firmware

[Ondrej Zary]

On Saturday 18 June 2022 19:35:01 Ondrej Zary wrote:
> Hello,
> I'm trying to get Micro Solutions Backpack USB CD-RW to work and maybe write a simple firmware loader module. It's based on Cypress EZ-USB FX2 so it should be easy (the loading code is already present in the kernel for other devices).
> 
> Micro Solutions released firmware and load scrips for Linux - it used to be called bpck-usb-firmware-1.1.tgz but seems to have vanished from the web, even archive.org does not have it. Frugalware distro used to include a package bpck-usb-firmware-1.1-1-i686.fpm until version 1.7 (it was removed in 1.8) but I was not able to find it anywhere (even tried Frugalware developers).
> 
> At least the load script can be found here:
> https://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/linux-hardware-18/external-usb-backpack-cd-rewriter-problem-212360/
> Firmware filenames extracted from the script:
> BP1SCAN.HEX, BP2SCAN.HEX (scan firmwares)
> BP1CD5.HEX, BP1CD6.HEX, BP1HD5.HEX, BP1HD6.HEX (for USB 1 chips)
> BP2CD5.HEX, BP2CD6.HEX, BP2HD5.HEX, BP2HD6.HEX (for USB 2 chips)
> BPINTCD.HEX, BPINTHD.HEX (for internal USB 2 chips)
> 
> So there seems to be two kinds of external USB adapters/cables - with FX (USB 1) and FX2 (USB 2) chips. First, a "scan" firmware is loaded that identifies the drive type and changes the ID appropriately. Then a final firmware is loaded, depending on the chip type, drive version (5 or 6) and drive type (CD or HDD).
> The latest devices have integrated USB support - no scanning is needed, just a CD or HDD firmware is loaded, depending on the ID.

Finally found the lost firmware files!

There's a Frugalware Linux 0.6 DVD 1 ISO at PC World Poland which contains the bpck-usb-firmware-1.1-1-i686.fpm file:
https://www.pcworld.pl/ftp/pobierz/linux/1582.html

-- 
Ondrej Zary