![[DSC F505]](dsc_f505.jpg)
Since I run Linux everywhere except for my Win95 laptop for work, I was forced to use the serial interface under Win95 to download the images. I worked with gphoto and tried to improve the DSC-F505 driver. After a bunch of work, it was still not great. It still had trouble with error recovery, and re-initializing the camera. As a result, I continued to use the Win95 tool to download images. However, it took well over an hour to download 90 images at 1024x768 (400k per image roughly, at 115200bps kinda sucks).
March 2000
I started working with
Linux USB development to find out how
far I was from being able to use my camera with USB. As it turns out,
the USB "mass storage" device driver was very stable (devel kernel 2.3.51),
and just needed some more information about what the
Reduced
Block Commands were (which I found on the
T10 Web Site).
After "adding" the RBC support, the camera reported various SCSI errors, which
I tracked down to incorrectly detected return values in the usb-storage code.
After putting in the changes to correct that, I was immediately able to see,
mount, and read from the camera's memory stick filesystem! I quickly bundled
my changes to the usb-storage
driver and posted them. As it turned out, Matt Dharm had been working on
exactly the same portion of the code, and didn't need my patch. Oh well, maybe
I'll get my name into the Linux Kernel some other way. :)
April 2000
Woohoo! Paul got me another battery and the 64M Memory Stick for my
birthday! It's going to take a lot of work to fill this Stick up.
May 2000
As far as I know, the 2.3.99-pre7 kernels and later support RBC
correctly.
Some people have been having trouble with the usb-storage almost
working correctly. In those situations, using the "UHCI Alternate Driver (JE) support" (uhci.o) instead of the "UHCI (Intel PIIX4, VIA, ...) support" (usb-uhci.o) seems to do the trick for fixing the problems.
June 1 2000
The stand-alone memory stick reader appears to be working with some tweaks:
Date: Thu, 01 Jun 2000 17:50:27 CEST
From: Stephan Henning
Subject: [linux-usb] Working: Sony Memorystick-Reader
Finally it's working:
Kernel: 2.4.0-test1-ac7
Modules: usbcore.o, usb-uhci.o (uhci.o doesn't work for me), usb-storage.o
I added the following lines in usb-storage's unusual devices list:
{0x054c, 0x002d, 0x0100,
"Sony MSAC-US1", US_SC_SCSI, US_PR_CB,
US_FL_SINGLE_LUN | US_FL_START_STOP | US_FL_MODE_XLATE | US_FL_ALT_LENGTH}
Unfortunately, it isn't working with the backport to 2.2.14.
June 15, 2000
(whoops, I forgot to add this entry on time)
The DSC-S30 is working with the following "unusual device" entry:
{0x054c, 0x0010, 0x0210,
"Sony DSC", US_SC_SCSI, US_PR_CB,
US_FL_SINGLE_LUN | US_FL_START_STOP | US_FL_MODE_XLATE | US_FL_ALT_LENGTH}
June 23, 2000
Looks like the S70 is also working. Thanks to Alexander Feder for sending
this to me. Looks like the S30 and S70 need the same tweak. Since the 4th
field purely informational, we should call it "Sony DSC-Sx0":
{0x054c, 0x0010, 0x210,
"Sony DSC-Sx0", US_SC_SCSI, US_PR_CB,
US_FL_SINGLE_LUN | US_FL_START_STOP | US_FL_MODE_XLATE | US_FL_ALT_LENGTH}
He also reports that the cameras work with the 2.2.16 backport, which I'm
going to have to go check out now. :)
A few people have been having trouble finding various information, so I think I'll include a few extra links here. The Linux USB working devices list has lots of information, including Sony cameras and memory stick readers. The DSC-F505, DSC-S30, and MSAC-US1 each have an entry.
July 9, 2000
Well, I finally got 2.2.16 plus the 2.4.0-test2-pre2 2.2.16 back-port
compiled and running on my machine. Looks like whatever changes got
made to usb-storage over time has finally changed the way things work
for the DSC F505. It, too, needs an "unusual device" entry:
{ 0x054c, 0x0010, 0x106,
"Sony DSC-F505", US_SC_SCSI, US_PR_CB,
US_FL_SINGLE_LUN | US_FL_START_STOP | US_FL_MODE_XLATE | US_FL_ALT_LENGTH}
However, with that working, everything is great! The only problem I've seen
is that usb-storage doesn't re-scan the size of the device on a re-insert.
For example, if I change the memory sticks in the camera, it still thinks
the old stick is in there. Only way around this is to unload usb-storage
and reload it. But that DOES work. :)
September 5, 2000
Tried out 2.4.0test7, and the DSC-F505 is still broken without the
"unusual device" entry:
--- linux-2.4.0test7/drivers/usb/storage/usb.c Mon Sep 4 21:25:52 2000
+++ linux-2.4.0test7-kees/drivers/usb/storage/usb-kees.c Mon Sep 4 21:26:20 2000
@@ -360,6 +360,12 @@
US_SC_SCSI, US_PR_CB, NULL,
US_FL_SINGLE_LUN | US_FL_START_STOP | US_FL_MODE_XLATE },
+ { 0x054c, 0x0010, 0x0106, 0x0106,
+ "Sony",
+ "DSC-F505",
+ US_SC_SCSI, US_PR_CB, NULL,
+ US_FL_SINGLE_LUN | US_FL_START_STOP | US_FL_MODE_XLATE },
+
{ 0x057b, 0x0000, 0x0000, 0x0299,
"Y-E Data",
"Flashbuster-U",
But with that, it works great. In fact, I don't even see the I/O errors
that sometimes cropped up in the 2.2.16 backport.
September 28, 2000
I've gotten a few emails from people telling me that they still can't
mount their Sony devices. Looks like they're forgetting that they
need SCSI disk support in the kernel. Either compiled in, or as
a module (sd.o), this is needed to interface with usb-storage.
T: Bus=01 Lev=01 Prnt=01 Port=00 Cnt=01 Dev#= 2 Spd=12 MxCh= 0 D: Ver= 1.00 Cls=00(>ifc ) Sub=00 Prot=00 MxPS= 8 #Cfgs= 1 P: Vendor=054c ProdID=0010 Rev= 1.06 S: Manufacturer=Sony S: Product=DSC-F505 C:* #Ifs= 1 Cfg#= 1 Atr=40 MxPwr= 2mA I: If#= 0 Alt= 0 #EPs= 3 Cls=08(stor.) Sub=01 Prot=01 Driver=usb-storage E: Ad=81(I) Atr=02(Bulk) MxPS= 64 Ivl= 0ms E: Ad=02(O) Atr=02(Bulk) MxPS= 64 Ivl= 0ms E: Ad=83(I) Atr=03(Int.) MxPS= 8 Ivl=255msAfter that was done, the kernel detected the camera as a SCSI device. You must have SCSI disk support compiled in for the "sd" devices to be accessible. (You can see that I have a 32M Memory Stick from the "dmesg" command):
Vendor: Sony Model: DSC - F505 Rev: 1.06 Type: Direct-Access ANSI SCSI revision: 02 Detected scsi removable disk sda at scsi2, channel 0, id 0, lun 0 SCSI device sdc: hdwr sector= 512 bytes. Sectors= 63488 [31 MB] [0.0 GB] sda: test WP failed, assume Write Protected sda: sda1This device has a DOS FAT12 filesystem on it (seen with "fdisk /dev/sda"):
Disk /dev/sda: 4 heads, 16 sectors, 992 cylinders Units = cylinders of 64 * 512 bytes Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/sda1 * 1 990 31670+ 1 FAT12And I was able to mount it normally under Linux (using "mount -t vfat /dev/sda1 /mnt/camera") and just copy the JPGs and MPGs from the camera. They even retained their time stamps from when the pictures were taken:
total 20128 drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 16384 Mar 12 13:52 ./ drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 16384 Mar 12 13:52 ../ -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 372040 Mar 12 13:52 dsc00001.jpg* -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 368765 Mar 12 13:52 dsc00002.jpg* -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 453414 Mar 12 13:52 dsc00003.jpg* -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 465629 Mar 12 13:53 dsc00004.jpg* -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 412102 Mar 12 13:55 dsc00005.jpg* -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 406586 Mar 12 13:55 dsc00006.jpg* -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 360537 Mar 12 13:55 dsc00007.jpg* -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 389970 Mar 12 13:55 dsc00008.jpg* -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 391855 Mar 12 13:58 dsc00009.jpg* -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 336306 Mar 12 13:59 dsc00010.jpg* -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 366521 Mar 12 14:00 dsc00011.jpg* ...It's quite nice. About 20 times faster than the serial interface right now.
The next step is to test deleting files and adding files to the filesystem. The SCSI subsystem is lying about the camera being read-only. There is a patch in the latest (2.4.0-test9) kernels to fix this problem, but I haven't verified that it works for me (others say it works like a charm, though).