Linux and the Desma BlueTooth CF-Card

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The Desma BlueTooth CF-Card doesn't work with Linux yet.

The card was tried in 4 different environments all with differing, unsuccessful results. Output of cardctl ident:

product info: "Compact Flash", "Bluetooth Card", "", ""
manfid: 0x0279, 0x950b
function: 2 (serial)

In the TuxMobil PCMCIA and CF-Card Survey you see quite a bunch of different cards with different functions with the very same Manufacturer-IDs. You can make any assumptions on that and I believe that there is the same bridge chip on the PCMCIA/CF interface of these cards which is connected to another Bluetooth/GPRS/whatever chip.

Notebook

The Apple PowerBook runs with Kernel 2.6.9-rc2 and bluez-utils 2.9-4 (Debian). When inserting the card, nothing happened first, so the following file was put into /etc/pcmcia/desma.conf:

    card "Desma Bluetooth Card"
        manfid 0x0279, 0x950b
        bind "btuart_cs"

this assumes that you also have the package bluez-pcmcia-support, as it is named in Debian, installed which defines (amongst other things)

    device "btuart_cs"
        class "bluetooth" module "btuart_cs"

and comes with an /etc/pcmcia/bluetooth and /etc/pcmcia/bluetooth.conf. Now the drivers are loaded at insertion, but the following messages appear in dmesg quite frequently:

btuart_receive: Unknown HCI packet with type 0x00 received
btuart_receive: Unknown HCI packet with type 0x80 received
btuart_interrupt: RLSI
btuart_receive: Unknown HCI packet with type 0xc0 received

then, hciconfig hci1 up fails with the message:

Can't init device hci0. Connection timed out(110)

if you do not have the support package installed, you get a new serial device at e.g. /dev/ttyS1 on insertion which you can hciattach:

    hciattach ttyS1 any
    

dmesg shows:

    h4_recv: Unknown HCI packet type 80
    h4_recv: Unknown HCI packet type 00
    h4_recv: Unknown HCI packet type 0c

but still, hci1 failed to get up with the same error message as shown above. Basically the same was to be seen on a notebook with x86 processor.

SHARP Zaurii

Both tested Zaurii run with kernel 2.4.18-rmk7-pxa3-embedix and bluez-utils 2.3-2.4.18d. On both machines, the card is recognized as a serial device at port ttyS3. hciattach shows the following:

on Zaurus SL-5500G (Sharp ROM 3.13): hciattach ttyS3 [any|digi|xircom|ericsson]

            Can't set line discipline: Invalid argument
            Can't initialize device: Invalid argument

on Zaurus SL-C750 (Sharp ROM 1.10 JP): no errors, but hciconfig hci0 up results in:

                Can't init device hci0. Connection timed out(110)

hciattach ttyS3 [csr|bboxes]

        Initialization timed out.

hciattach ttyS3 swave

        Failed to write init command: Success
        Can't initialize device: Success

hciattach ttyS3 bcsp

        BCSP initialation timed out

Conclusion

So that card seems yet unusable, but some more digging in the net and asking Linux Bluetooth developers might help. An email to the manufacturer, sent several weeks ago, was left unanswered yet.

Desma BlueTooth USB Dongle

The dongle works with Linux out-of-the-box. FCC ID: QW3-BTCA01.