Re: Talking to USB

From: Don (phoney.email_at_yahoo.com)
Date: 12/02/04 

Date: Thu, 02 Dec 2004 13:19:45 GMT

Hi Thomas,

I have located the low level driver DLL but there is no documentation
in the SDK about the calls. The SDK was supplied on "as is" basis, so
I can't ask. There is a well documented TWAIN driver, of course, but I
want to use the low level commands which bypass it. The SDK enumerates
them but doesn't explain how to send them down the USB pipe.

The driver DLL has a single entry and I've disassembled it to discover
there are 9 routines in there, but finding out what they do and the
call setup is very time consuming.

I had hoped that USB has some canonical low level (very basic) comms
protocol. Of course, each device uses different commands, but I
expected the basics to be the same e.g. send command, receive command,
send byte, receive byte and status.

Don.

On Wed, 1 Dec 2004 06:03:02 -0800,
"=?Utf-8?B?VGhvbWFzIFNlZGxhY3plaw==?="
<ThomasSedlaczek@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote:

>Hi Don,
>
>there is no way to talk direct to a USB device from VB6. You will allways
>need a driver dll or a control (which hadels the driver access) between. What
>you can use depends on that device you will use and what the device
>manufacture offers. If there isnt such things offert for your device you will
>have to write it your self in C++. Or look for a different device. FTDI-chip
>(www.ftdichip.com) for e.g. offers direct driver dll for there UART and
>parallel FIFO devices. They have also a VB sample program on there web page.
>Braintechnology(www.braintechnology.de) has Active-x controlls for USB1.0 and
>USB2.0 chips from Cypress.
>
>Best regards,
>Thomas
>
>"Don" wrote:
>
>> Environment: VB6 under W98
>>
>> I have a USB hardware device I wish to program directly. The original
>> software installed a low level driver and the hardware is both
>> registered and operational.
>>
>> Now then, I'd like to have access to this device directly. In other
>> words, I'd like to enumerate all devices on the USB bus, pick the one
>> I want, and then communicate with it (send commands, get data, etc).
>>
>> So, how does one go about talking to the USB? VB6/W98 combo doesn't
>> seem to have any dedicated USB routines.
>>
>> What I need - I guess - is the USB equivalent of the MSComm control.
>> Is there such a thing as a "USB Control"? What's the canonical way of
>> talking to USB from VB?
>>
>> I did google around a bit but couldn't find anything applicable. Most
>> sites and pages I came across seem to focus on actually writing a low
>> level USB driver.
>>
>> Thanks!
>>
>> Don.
>>

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