How to bind passthru to NDIS USB driver

Following on from earlier, and pestering Thomas, I'd like to throw this one
in the ring...

I'm trying to load the passthru intermediate driver (and Thomas's variants
thereof) and bind it to a USB data-link cable device.

These cables link two PCs, providing ethernet connection between them, over
USB. The passthru intermediate driver binds to the NIC and the modem port
(NDISWAN), but not to the USB devices (two connected). The USB devices
appear in the Network Connections window as 'Local Area Connection's . Their
device name is given as 'USB Virtual Network Adapter #n'. They transmit IP
and act like an ethernet connection over an ethernet NIC. In addition to
that, they can automatically provide an IP address, to each connected PC -ie
contain a DHCP server each end.
The class in the INF file for the USB devices is 'net'.
I'm using Thomas's passthru sample INFs unmodified (though I've tried a few
changes!)

So my question is... How do I get a passthru sample driver to bind to the
USB devices? What changes do I need to make to the INF file? (I'm not using
a notify object.)

 

Hmmm... not getting any responses at all.
Is the question too obscure?
Is there more detail needed to better describe the problem?
Has no-one tried to bind an NDIS intermediate driver to anything other than
a NIC?

Any info at all would be helpful. I've searched for descriptions of the use
of INF files without a lot of success. (Found descriptions, including in the
DDK documentation, but not very applicable/useful.)

thanks,
Ken Wagnitz..

 

The question isn't too obscure, Ken. Just peculiar.

There are two kinds of USB Network Adapters:

1.) Adapters that implement NDIS in the adapter firmware and interface to
NDIS using the "Remote NDIS" (RNDIS) interface.
2.) "Other" implementations that can be called a "NDIS-Windows Driver Model"
(NDIS-WDM).

Almost any USB Ethernet or USB-802.11 adapter that you can find uses the
RNDIS interface and bind quite nicely to Passthru. I have a collection of
NDIS USB adapters that I use for testing.

Evidently you have a NDIS-WDM driver. There really isn't any "specification"
for a NDIS-WDM driver. It is a driver that should have a NDIS "upper-edge",
but glues to the lower-level hardware using WDM (Non-NDIS) system calls.
NDIS-WDM drivers can be used to "glue" a NDIS miniport edge to USB, serial
ports, a telegraph key, a blinking light or whatever. It is easy to make
some small mistake in a NDIS-WDM driver that would cause some sort of
problem.

In addition, do be sure to start your system with the USB adapter plugged
in. Unsigned NDIS IM drivers may not behave properly if an adapter is
installed after the IM driver is installed.

Good luck,

Thomas F. Divine

 

Thanks for that Thomas.
I was hoping to give you a rest and get someone else to chip in!

I'll see if I can add a bit of detail corresponding to your points...

One difference between the data-link cables I have, compared with a couple
of USB-ethernet adapters linked to each other, is that the link cables supply
an IP address to each end. Don't know if that affects things any.

I have powered the laptop end up while the cables were plugged in. The
connections were restored, the only thing I had to do was re-enter the
gateway address to the distant end, into the Windows routing table
(presumably because I didn't add it as persistent).

regards,
Ken.

<snip>