The Reverse-Engineered Corsair PSU Linux Driver Continues To Be Improved Upon

[brouhaha]

I'll admit that it's not something i _need_, but I like the PSU monitoring. It's a shame that Corsair has discontinued all of the "i" series power supplies other than maybe the AX1500i and AX1600i. Last year I wanted to buy some more AX850i, and discovered that the prices for new old stock of that model had become astronomical.

[flower]

Too bad i just bought an AX850.

[coder]

a decade ago I received a cease and desist letter from a famous DVD-burner company, because I published a software under Linux using the quality scan capability of the drive - which was transmitted in clear by the DVD drive!

Thank you. Having used such tools "back in the day", I really appreciate your efforts.

I know of only 2 brands that supported this: Lite-On and some Plextor models. So, I guess that narrows it down.

I always thought it'd be neat to project the scan data back on an image of the disc, so you could see where defects were physically located. In case some were dirt or fingerprints, this would help you see where to clean the disc (assuming the disc was clean, at the time it was written!).

[coder]

On the hardware side it's just an internal USB cable between the motherboard and the PSU. That's a pretty elegant solution IMO.

It feels like overkill, to me. I wish ATX had just included an I2C pin in the connector block. I think that would be adequate to the task.

[boxie]

I'm the author of the corsair-psu driver ... well, I never thought about contacting Corsair. Though I did contact vendors in the past. But as a developer who does this in private (and not part of a company) you are basically ignored most of the time. At least my success rate was below 5%. But yeah, if I try now after the driver got mainlined I may get some support. I still need the protocol of the AXi series (which do not use USB HID).

I for one am a very happy user of your work, thank you!

[zeb_]

I know of only 2 brands that supported this: Lite-On and some Plextor models. So, I guess that narrows it down.

It was Plextor indeed. I collaborated with Alexander Noe who wrote the Windows version and did the port to Linux. His project page with source code is still up: https://www.alexander-noe.com/cdvd/px/index.php. My Linux code is not available on Sourceforge anymore. Interestingly Plextor Europe had no problem with it, it was Plextor Japan who threatened us. Shortly after the threats Plextor released new models where the check commands were protected. I abandoned the project after that - Plextor who were the best at the time were rapidly joined by the competition anyway, and writing reliability was overall very good among most hardware makers. And today, optical storage is starting to become obsolete.

[coder]

It was Plextor indeed. I collaborated with Alexander Noe who wrote the Windows version and did the port to Linux. His project page with source code is still up: https://www.alexander-noe.com/cdvd/px/index.php.

Thanks for the background, and thanks again for your work.

Interestingly Plextor Europe had no problem with it, it was Plextor Japan who threatened us. Shortly after the threats Plextor released new models where the check commands were protected.

Did any other brands sell rebadged Plextor drives? Other than that, I seem to recall that there were OEM versions of Plextor drives that came without their software tools. I can only guess they were concerned that the availability of free tools would erode the value-add of their retail version.

It's a little ironic that a company who indirectly profited so much from piracy of software, music, and movies was itself so sensitive to such a slight.

[torsionbar28]

12V PSU's would be aqesome!

There are some ITX server boards that have switched to an 8 pin DC input, requiring only 12v, instead of the 24 pin ATX connector.

[olielvewen]

Akiko

I don't know if you are aware but there is already existing a support for RMi and HXi series PSU Corsair in the Liquidctl project (https://github.com/liquidctl/liquidc...tegrate-lqinfo) and since September/October 2019. And Event a partial support for Some Seasonic/NZXT series PSU.
And for Corsair it is a full support. Take a look here
You should contact Jonas, it a great man and very open.

And if the project is enough good (and if the compagny has an "open source mind" they can something help a private developer like Flozz the developer of the rivalcfg project (SteelSeries mouses). Now, SteelSeries sends him new models for making reverse-engineering.

[Akiko]

Akiko

I don't know if you are aware but there is already existing a support for RMi and HXi series PSU Corsair in the Liquidctl project (https://github.com/liquidctl/liquidc...tegrate-lqinfo) and since September/October 2019. And Event a partial support for Some Seasonic/NZXT series PSU.
And for Corsair it is a full support. Take a look here
You should contact Jonas, it a great man and very open.

I'm aware of all these projects. The liquidctl does not support reading critical values (min/max). It does not even support all RMi/HXi PSUs out there (some usb hid ids are missing). Furthermore, the driver I wrote is part of the hwmon subsystem. So everything is reported via sysfs/debugfs and can be used by every tool, that deals with the hwmon subsystem or the lw_sensors api. I'm also aware that it supports fan mode changing and over current protection switching. This is something I do not include into the driver, because you can damage your PSU with these kind of options. But the driver provides a rawHID interface. You can use it to send and receive the 64byte messages the USB HID interface is using, to add this functionality. Can be done in under 10 lines of code.

What I really need is access to AXi series PSUs, which is very unlikely to happen, these PSUs are just to expensive.