In message <200203130658.g2D6wKF22369@guild.plethora.net>, Peter Seebach writes
:
>I saw a penguin logo on one of these.  Keyspan has started distributing a
>Linux driver with very aggressive attempts to restrict the distribution of
>their firmware, but I don't know how much they care.  The driver covers
>almost all of their widgets, supposedly.  I dropped them a line to ask for
>permission to copy the raw hex firmware files, and if that can be had, perhaps
>a driver can be obtained.
>
>(Not that this is all *THAT* useful, given the existance of other supported
>hardware, but it's a nice idea.)

Oh, man.  This gets way better:

http://www.omnigroup.com/~wiml/soft/pic/keyspan.html

Basically, the widget is an Anchor device (see usb/ezload.c) which happens
to most easily be hooked up as a serial adapter.  There's firmware available
to download to it to make it talk to a serial chip, which is what's on
the board, but some guy documented the entire thing in enough detail to
make it a fairly practical general-purpose device.

Anyway, if I get time, I hope to try to upload some firmware to this widget
and see what it does.  I have firmware for both of the variants I have
access to, as well as a number of 'em I don't.

-s