UIPAQ(4)

📦
version 15.1 · 3 versions
, in freebsd 14.5, freebsd 15.1, nixpkgs unstable

💅 UIPAQ(4) — like, the uipaq man page, bestie ✨

okay so this is the uipaq page from the Kernel Interfaces Manual — yes, the 4th section, we love a tty-adjacent king 👑 — and it's all about USB support for iPAQ units. sit down, grab a strawberry drink 🍓, and let's get into it.

✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

so if you wanna bake this driver into the kernel (main character energy, no modules, we commit 💅), you gotta drop these lines into your kernel configuration file:

device usb
device ucom
device uipaq

OR — and hear me out — you can just load it as a module at boot time 🧚, in which case you put this single line in loader.conf(5):

uipaq_load="YES"

literally that's it. slay.

🌸 DESCRIPTION 🌸

the uipaq driver provides support for the USB serial emulation provided by the iPAQ devices. like, that's its whole thing and it does it beautifully.

and the way you actually access the device? through the ucom(4) driver 🫶 — which makes it behave like a tty(4). yes bestie, that means it's giving terminal. it's giving serial port. it's giving everything you wanted.

🦋 HARDWARE 🦋

the uipaq driver supports the following iPAQ devices (a whole lineup, honestly iconic):

  • ASUS P535 PDA
  • Casio BE300 PDA
  • Compaq IPaq PocketPC
  • HP Jornada 568
  • HP iPAQ 22xx/Jornada 548
  • HTC PPC6700 Modem
  • HTC Smart Phone
  • HTC Winmobile
  • Sharp W-ZERO3 ES Spart Phone
  • Most Windows CE based phones
ngl the last one is doing a lot of heavy lifting — "Most Windows CE based phones" — but we respect the range 💀✨

🎀 FILES 🎀

here's where the device nodes live, ok, write these down:

  • /dev/ttyU* — for callin ports
  • /dev/ttyU*.init — corresponding callin initial-state device
  • /dev/ttyU*.lock — corresponding callin lock-state device
  • /dev/cuaU* — for callout ports
  • /dev/cuaU*.init — corresponding callout initial-state device
  • /dev/cuaU*.lock — corresponding callout lock-state device

callin vs callout, initial-state vs lock-state — like, the whole family, all accounted for 💖

⭐ SEE ALSO ⭐

go read these next, bestie, they're fr fr relevant:

iykyk 💫

🌈 HISTORY 🌈

okay, storytime 📖✨

the FreeBSD support was imported from NetBSD for FreeBSD 7.0. and NetBSD? they added support in NetBSD 4.0 — and that was imported from OpenBSD 3.8. so this driver has, like, a whole ancestry. a lineage. generational talent, honestly 👑

and that's the whole page, bestie — this one came out of the Debian side of things, dated April 14, 2025, so go forth and serial-connect responsibly 🫶💜

📦 where this page comes from