[Libff-devel] Sidewinder FF driver

[Fabien B. <fab...@fr...>]

Hello,
I'm new to the list, and I'm working on a Microsoft Sidewinder Force
Feedback 2 driver (Product ID=0x001b, Vendor ID=0x045e).
I started to study USB, HID and PID protocols and the joystick seems to
follow PID specification.
I implemented a skeleton driver (with latest development kernel 2.5.7)
which do the following things:
when insmod'ed : reset device, adjust gain, upload an arbitrary effect
(sort of machine-gun effect sniffed from the Windows test of the
joystick) and play it, and it works !
when rmmod'ed : stop effect, reset device.
For the moment, no IOCTL and no relation with evdev except for position
of joystick and buttons.

The theory of operations:
the driver uses 4 flow of data with the device: control in (for "block
load report" and "pid pool report": see pid spec.), control out (for
"create new effect report") , interrupt in (for joystick state (axes,
buttons, power, optical switch)) and interrupt out for all other
commands (set effect report, set envelope report, device gain report,
pid device control , ....)

I've not release yet any file, because it's in early alpha stage and
it's very dirty code, must clean up before all, implement correct data
structures to follow PID spec...
I think in a few weeks (depend on the time I have), I put all of that on
a Web site.

I've a problem with this driver: I can't insert it without rmmod hid, I
think it's the fault of hid-input who register the device, so I can't
register it twice. Any idea ? (without modify hid code).

Thanks in advance.

Fabien Brachere