bootloader bwPollTimeout quirk in dfu-util

[Tormod Volden]

Hi,

I am sending out this notice to those who seem to use a DFU boot
loader and an OpenMoko USB vendor ID, listed on
http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/USB_Product_IDs

If your device is never used together with dfu-util, please disregard,
sorry for the noise.

The OpenMoko FreeRunner has a bug in its bootloader which makes it
report bogus bwPollTimeout values to the DFU host computer (e.g.
dfu-util). We therefore introduced a quirk in dfu-util for ignoring
this value and instead using a default value of 5 ms on these devices.
At the time, only the FreeRunner was using the OpenMoko vendor ID and
since it was using a large range of product IDs, the quirk was
filtered on the vendor ID only.

Recently (?) OpenMoko started giving away product IDs to other
open-source projects. The 5 ms quirk has been applied to all these
devices. We just discovered this was causing problems for some devices
(when 5 ms was too short, and the device actually reports correct
values), e.g. https://community.spark.io/t/dfu-util-on-linux-fails-to-flash-solved/4080/21#

So we are now correcting this to only filter on the OpenMoko
FreeRunner devices, which cover a limited range of product IDs. This
will be part of the upcoming dfu-util 0.8 release:
https://gitorious.org/dfu-util/dfu-util/commit/cca127e4f53087c71253f3e3040b66165ce490af

*** This means dfu-util from now on will use the bwPollTimeout values
reported by your device. ***
*** If these values are wrong, please report to us so that we can add
a quirk for your device. ***

We believe most devices report correct values, so the change in
dfu-util will only lead to faster and/or more reliable programming. So
we will take the chance of applying this change across the board and
smoking the bad ones out (if any), instead of white-listing devices
one by one.

For testing with dfu-util, please use latest git from
https://gitorious.org/dfu-util/dfu-util

Best regards,
Tormod
dfu-util maintainer
http://dfu-util.gnumonks.org/