Hi.

Does anyone know where one might purchase a USB to ethernet adapter that actually works with linux? Preferably at a reasonably low cost.

The problem I have is that for a number of small ARM boards I have made, I have an occasional requirement to add ethernet. In the good old days I would reach for one of my ADMtek ADM8515 based adapters, which would simply work, as the drivers have been in the kernel for ages. However, my supply of these has shrunk to none, annoyingly, and even more annoyingly they seem to be impossible to now buy.

More recently, I succeeded in getting a Davicom DM9601 adapter running on the hardware. OK, thinks I, I'll get a few more off ebay. No luck, those have evaporated as well. You can still get cheap adapters that look identical to the DM9601 units, which in turn look identical to the ADM8515 ones, but they're based on a chipset from some chinese manufacturer no one has ever heard of.

None of the ebay sellers seem to know the first thing about what they're selling, and are completely unable to provide me with a manufacturer or model number before I buy one, so I have to buy a sample one, check it out when it arrives, and bin it when it's no use. I don't feel this is very useful I'd like to find someone who could consistently supply me with the same damn unit, not change it every time I place an order.

Any ideas?

pca

It might be worth looking into the USB Ethernet adaptor for the Nintendo Wii. It uses an ASIX AX88772 chip, and is unlikely to change due to needing to work with any Wii system.

Also found this page talking about the Apple USB Ethernet adaptor and a few others under Linux. Looks like this requires a somewhat recent kernel though to recognize the device id (2.6.25). I can confirm the newer MC704ZM/A is using the same IDs as MB442Z/A, and is working when plugged into an Ubuntu 10.10 system with the asix module.

So long as you use a recent Linux kernel (from, say, the past year), then I would be quite surprised if you could find any USB-ethernet adapter that does not work with Linux.

But if you're looking for first-hand experience, then anything ASIX based has always worked, though the recent 2.7.37 kernels broke my own ASIX-based adapter.

For cheap, there's always DX. I have purchased two moschip MCS7830 adapters from DX. They work for me here, but they do need a fairly recent kernel on some USB ports (2.6.36 works, probably also 2.6.35).

Cheers

Mmm.. the MCS7830 adapter I use appears to be out-of-stock at DX. Too bad.

Do you really need the throughput of 100baseT? If not, then DX does have a ton of other cheap USB ethernet adapters that will work. But nearly all of them use a 12mb/s USB connection even though the ethernet side is true 10/100mb/s.

Eg. This one.
Or This other one.


Cheers

Oh, and here is one that claims to be true hi-speed USB and works with Linux. Reports are spotty though --> some versions are hi-speed, others not.

Oh. Here's a good looking MCS7830-based adapter combined with a 3-port USB hub. Works with Linux.

Ah, now that's a neat one. That may do the trick. Thanks.

I did have a couple of ADM8515 ones, like I said, that were in a really small case that was essentially just a dongle on the end of an ethernet cable. There seem to be loads of the same looking thing around, but of course the innards are all different, and none of the sellers seem to know what they actually are

The USB ports are true USB 2.0 high speed, although for most purposes the 100Mbit throughput of the ethernet adaptor wouldn't be required. It's mainly for software development, via NFS mounts, as the ethernet interface was omitted from this version for weight reasons...

The device in question is running 2.6.32.something at the moment. It needs to be a more recent one, definitely, but that's another problem that will get sorted in the end. It works with most of the things it needs to. I'm quite pleased, it was the end result of a lot of fairly complex work

pca

Yeah, I thought that perhaps the eth+hub combo might be useful for embedded stuff.

The MCS7830-based adapters I have here actually do work on 2.6.32 (Ubuntu kernel), so they might be fine with the kernel you have there already.

I just seem to recall some issue with the USB side of it back on an older kernel last spring.. don't remember the specifics though.

Cheers