UVISOR(4)

✨ uvisor — USB support for the PalmOS based PDAs ✨

okay bestie, welcome to the uvisor(4) page 💖 this one lives in the Kernel Interfaces Manual, so you know it's the real deal. sit down, grab a strawberry 🍓, and let's talk about making ur old-school PDA talk to ur kernel like it's 2002 and the vibes are immaculate.

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🌸 NAME 🌸

uvisor — USB support for the PalmOS based PDAs 🫶

no cap, that's literally the whole job description. if ur Handspring or ur Palm or ur Sony Clie wants to chat over USB, this is the driver that makes it happen 💅

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✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

so like, two ways to get this baby loaded. pick ur fighter 🎀

Option 1: bake it into the kernel — to compile this driver into the kernel, place the following lines in your kernel configuration file:

device usb
device ucom
device uvisor

Option 2: load it as a module at boot — alternatively, to load the driver as a module at boot time, place the following line in loader.conf(5):

uvisor_load="YES"

that's it. that's the whole vibe check. 🔥

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💜 DESCRIPTION 💜

okay so here's the tea ☕ — the uvisor driver provides support for USB based PalmOS PDAs, like Handspring Visor, Palm Mxxx series, and Sony Clie. iconic lineage fr fr 👑

the device is accessed through the ucom(4) driver which makes it behave like a tty(4). so it's giving... serial port, but make it USB 🌈

here's the cute part: the device has several ports for different purposes, and each of them gets its own ucom(4) device. like each port is its own main character 💅 and the attach message describes the purpose of each port, so read ur dmesg, bestie, it's literally telling u what's up.

the usual Pilot tools can be used to access the attached device on the HotSync port. yes, the HotSync port. we love a dedicated sync port 🫶

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🦋 HARDWARE 🦋

the uvisor driver supports the following devices:

• Aceeca Mez1000 RDA
• Handspring Treo
• Handspring Treo 600
• Handspring Visor
• Palm I705
• Palm M125
• Palm M130
• Palm M500
• Palm M505
• Palm M515
• Palm Tungsten T
• Palm Tungsten Z
• Palm Zire
• Palm Zire 31
• Sony Clie 4.0
• Sony Clie 4.1
• Sony Clie 5.0
• Sony Clie PEG-S500C
• Sony Clie NX60
• Sony Clie S360
• Sony Clie TJ37

look at that list 😭 it's a whole museum of early-2000s tech and honestly? we're obsessed. Palm Tungsten Z? Sony Clie TJ37? the drip is unmatched 💖

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🎀 FILES 🎀

here's where ur ports actually live on the filesystem, bestie 📁

/dev/ttyU*       for callin ports
/dev/ttyU*.init
/dev/ttyU*.lock  corresponding callin initial-state and lock-state
                 devices

/dev/cuaU*       for callout ports
/dev/cuaU*.init
/dev/cuaU*.lock  corresponding callout initial-state and lock-state
                 devices

so like, ttyU* is for callin (dial-in vibes), cuaU* is for callout (dial-out vibes), and each one has a .init friend and a .lock friend holding down initial-state and lock-state respectively. a little trio. a little squad. 🫶

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👑 SEE ALSO 👑

• tty(4)
• ucom(4)
• usb(4)

go read those too, they're the supporting cast and they ate 💅

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🌈 HISTORY 🌈

the uvisor driver was adopted from NetBSD 1.5 in August 2002. This manual page was adopted from NetBSD by Tom Rhodes <trhodes@FreeBSD.org> at that time.

so yeah, August 2002 — a true elder of the game, and Tom Rhodes carried this page over from NetBSD. respect the ancestors 🙏✨

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💀 BUGS 💀

okay bestie, sit down for this one, this is the serious part 🫶

The code to provide multiple ucom(4) instances has not yet been ported from NetBSD. It is unclear whether this driver works in its current state.

not me reading that twice 😭 so the multi-instance code is still back over in NetBSD, and the docs are straight-up saying it's unclear whether this driver works in its current state. that's not a vibe check, that's a vibe question mark. proceed accordingly, no cap. ⚠️

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and that's the whole page, bestie 💜 this one came from the Debian edition of the manual, dated April 26, 2017 — so shoutout to Debian and that date for keeping the Palm PDA dream alive 🎀✨ k love u bye 💅