faxgetty

[Graham]

Anyone know if the mini USB/serial port can be actually used to talk to a USB fax modem.

Or, if there is some type of usb/serial converter that could be used ...

Thanks

[MarkF]

The mini-USB connector is not a USB host port.  You can plug the mini-USB connector into a host port on another machine to talk to the JTAG or Serial ports in the Plug.  The mini-USB port is pretty much for debugging.

You should be able to plug a USB->Serial adapter into the plug's USB host port (the one near the Ethernet connector).  The adapter only needs to meet two requirements:
1) can live on the power the plug supplies through this port (adding a powered USB hub between the two can also meet this requirement)
2) have a driver available in the Linux that is running on the plug

I understand that people have had great success with devices based on the Prolific 2303 bridge.  I have not used one of these myself.

[Graham]

So, I could setup a usb to serial converter on this port, and  a usb hard drive if I were to use a powered usb hub ...

[MarkF]

If you have the drivers and power, yes.  Just remember that everything attached to that port shares a fixed amount of bandwidth.

EDIT: I just read this topic.  This is a very cheap USB->Serial adapter that seems to work.  Again, I haven't tried this myself.

[Graham]

I saw that cheap USB to serial port converter as well 

I am wondering if I can run a Hylafax server on this plug ... so the incoming fax over the serial line will need to be saved to attached usb hard drive.

[MarkF]

The number of concurrent faxes (in/out) would be limited by the USB bandwidth, the devices doing the sending/receiving and the USB attached storage.  I don't know how many you will be able to support concurrently; but, I'd expect more than one.  If you try this and find the number too small, you might think about using a NAS (network attached storage) for saving the incoming data and caching the outgoing data.  This would move some of the data traffic from the USB port to Ethernet.

Looking at the HylaFax functionality, I also worry about the conversion of documents.  The processor in this device has no floating point unit so some types of math run very slow.  It all depends on the conversion algorithm(s).

[Graham]

The number of concurrent faxes (in/out) would be limited by the USB bandwidth, the devices doing the sending/receiving and the USB attached storage.  I don't know how many you will be able to support concurrently; but, I'd expect more than one.  If you try this and find the number too small

I was only thinking of attaching one modem ... this would be for a low volume service.

Looking at the HylaFax functionality, I also worry about the conversion of documents.  The processor in this device has no floating point unit so some types of math run very slow.  It all depends on the conversion algorithm(s).

I mentioned this on the Hylafax mailing list ... ie. the lack of FPU,  but someone said he had got Hylafax running on a much less powerful ARM processor before. 

[MarkF]

I was only thinking of attaching one modem ... this would be for a low volume service.

That should work without problems.

I mentioned this on the Hylafax mailing list ... ie. the lack of FPU,  but someone said he had got Hylafax running on a much less powerful ARM processor before. 

Some "low power" ARMs (200-400 MHz) have a vector floating point unit.  I believe trying it would be the best test.

As an aside, I just ordered 5 of the cheap Prolific devices mentioned above to give them a try.