Linux Driver for the Butterfly Media Compact Flash Adapter

Introduction

The Butterfly Media Compact Flash Adapter is an inexpensive USB to Compact Flash adapter which is based on the Prolific PL-2307B USB-ATAPI bridge controller. To connect this device to a Linux 2.4 system, I have adapted Enrico Bravin's usbide BusLink 20 GB USB HD driver which is designed to interface with a similar chip.

Note: I've tried this out on a stock RedHat 7.2 kernel (2.4.7-10) with good results, but a standard kernel 2.4.18 did _not_ work. There have been some significant changes in the usb subsystem between 2.4.7 and 2.4.18, so Enrico's driver may need some updating.

Installation

To begin, get Enrico's version 1.2.1 usbide driver at Enrico's Site

uncompress/untar it and apply this patch

tar zxf usbide-1.2.1.tar.gz
gzip -cd butterfly_patch-1.2.1.gz | patch -p0

Then, follow Enrico's excellent installation instructions to compile and install the driver.

Use

Once you've compiled and installed the driver, load the driver with some variation of

modprobe usbide

and plug the adapter into the USB. Insert a CF card into the adapter. Check the syslog and look for messages from the driver indicating that it has detected the card. If all went well, you may create a mount point for your card in the filesystem and mount the card. After that, read and write the card as if it were an ordinary hard drive. Before ejecting the card, unmount it.

Automounting

On my stock Redhat 7.2 systems, I've set up the hotplug system to automatically mount the compact flash card when the usb subsystem sees it. Just grab my usbide script and put it in the /etc/hotplug/usb directory. Then, add this line to /etc/fstab:

/dev/pda1 /mnt/cf auto noauto,owner 0 0

and create the mountpoint /mnt/cf. The next time you insert a Compact Flash card it should be mounted and ready to use.

Download

Get my patch here: butterfly_patch-1.2.1.gz

Please let me know if this patch works for you.

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Last Updated

:2002-03-24

Comments to:

Eric Brombaugh