usb problems

[Nils Kassube]

Gene Heskett wrote:
> I am in need of a tool that will effectively do a ping against a
> specified USB port, a port I know there is something on the other end
> of the cable and hub as I just had a printer do a test page over the
> same cabling. Basically I want to send a $55 down the cable once a
> second to a specified port, in thgius case /dev/ttyUSB1, for
> oscilloscope troubleshooting, at least as long as trouble doesn't
> shoot back... ;-)

If that /dev/ttyUSB1 device is a USB->serial converter, you could treat 
it like any terminal device. Therefore, you can use stty to disable the 
handshaking lines and set the desired speed (e.g. 100 Baud). Then echo 
the desired characters to the device:

stty -F /dev/ttyUSB1 clocal ospeed 100
while true;do echo -n "e" >/dev/ttyUSB1;sleep 1;done

You can cancel the loop with CTRL-C.


Nils