Forgot your password?
Document Actions
cuecat_html
A couple of months ago I bought a USB cuecat model no. 66-1966
(system board K023A055 Rev A) from a electronics parts store... It
lights up, detects as a USB HID something under XP, but does nothing in
the way of actually sending input into my machine.
>
The goal to produce a Knoppix live CD for myself and other folks to use their USB CueCats so that we might use the cat with the older software it requires without having to install a really old kernel to the hard drive.... eventually I'm hoping to write some kind of Knoppix-based Point of Sale demo thingy for buying and selling the products in my kitchen or something (I'm doing this for fun... no really, I'm crazy like that).
>
Nov 10, 2004 - Please wakeup kiddy
>I declawed the sucker according to the instructions at http://mavin.com/cuecat_flyer.html and http://www.flyingbuttmonkeys.com/foocat/usb/ however I still get no data back from the cuecat.
>
Having a few days of vacation at hand I decided to try to get it working using Linux, I had a go at remastering my first Knoppix distro while I was at it.... I took knoppix 3.7 dropped language support, added QEMU (to test ISO builds) and dropped in the Linux 2.4.21 kernel w/ Cuecat 0.8.2 patch... I got the new CD to boot after quite some time fiddling around with the kernel drivers miniroot (about 6 builds before I got it right with CLOOP detecting the drive properly, etc)...
>
I followed the instructions at http://webperso.easyconnect.fr/om.the/web/cuecat/download/cuecat/README, creating the scanners dir, loading each of the modules in and then trying 'cat /dev/scanners/cuecat' and 'tail -f /dev/scanners/cuecat'... both commands sit waiting for input but still the cat does not produce data.
>
Now, I'm thinking of installing Windows 98 to see if this hardware works at all (I'm really hoping I don't have to resort to that though :P )....
>
Nov 12, 2004 - Windows 98 SE works
I got Win98SE to install on a friends broken PC and plugged my USB CueCat, it detected as a USB HID Keyboard and worked... >
I discovered that I had been trying to scan in correctly... the cat must go across the bar code perpendicularly to read a code...
>
Wake the cat if it goes dim and blings by holding the nose against a white peice of paper point blank till it goes red, then turn the bar code so all of the bars are horzontial then walk the cat up and down the stairs while holding the nose about 1 cm off the barcode (too close or far won't register)... Bingo you get a UPC. :-)
>
Now back to trying to make it work with Linux!
>
Project Downloads
>
Nov 10 - 1st Try (Kernel config did not have usbkbd - could that be it?)
- Kernel Image 2.4.21-ged1-cuecat-gcc2.95 (Debian GNU/Linux i386 package - Knoppix is also based on Debian)
> - dmesg output 2.4.21-ged1-cuecat-gcc2.95
- history of 1st attempt 2.4.21-ged1-cuecat-gcc2.95
- lsmod 2.4.21-ged1-cuecat-gcc2.95
> - lsusb 2.4.21-ged1-cuecat-gcc2.95
- Other related stuff
Nov 12 - 2nd Try (recompile with usbkbd and usbmouse)
>- works only when usb-uhci is not loaded (i.e. booting Knoppix with failsafe option)
GCat
- wrote a quick and dirty shell script called gcat.sh to read in data and write to a crude XML format (sample file).
>
- works only when usb-uhci is not loaded (i.e. booting Knoppix with failsafe option)
GCat
- wrote a quick and dirty shell script called gcat.sh to read in data and write to a crude XML format (sample file).
>