RealTeck PCIe Card Reader (10ec:5209) osx driver project

[jaymonkey]

Hello fellow Hackingtosh’ers

I have a Sony SE Laptop, which has a RealTeK RTS5209 PCIe Card Reader, but there are many other types and brands of laptops that have the same type of card reader such as the entire Sony ‘S’ range and the HP DV6 6020.

If you own a laptop with this device I am sure that you have been frustrated by lack of OSX Lion support for this Card Rader.

The card reader in our systems has hardware ID: 10ec:5209

This equates to the following:-

Realtek Semiconductor Co, RTS5209 PCI Express Card Reader Chip Set

So the big problem here is that the device is PCIe based, Apple have never used a PCIe based card reader, they have always used a USB bus based device thus there is no existing driver.

Getting any info on the Realtek 5209 chipset has proven difficult, I cant even find it on RealTek’s own site, however after a bit of research i have been able to find out the following specs:-

• Secure Digital TM (SD), SDXC, SDHC, MultiMediaCard TM (MMC)
• Mini-SD, Micro-SD (T-flash),RS-MMC, Mobile-MMC and MMC-micro
• MMC 8-bit date mode
• SDXC and MSXC up to 2TB
• Support SD3.0 SDR-104 (208MHz), SDR-50 (100MHz) and DDR 50 (50MHz)
• MSPRO-HG Duo 8-bit date mode
• xD-Picture Card TM (xD) includes Type M+, Type M and Type H
• Compliant with PCI Express Base Specification Revision 1.1
• Compliant with SD Part 1 Physical Layer Specification Version 3.0
• Compliant with SDIO Specification Version 2.00

The important thing to note is that it is compliant with the SDIO Spec V2, which is essentially an API for card readers.

On the RealTek download site there is a Unix/Linux Driver available here: -

http://www.realtek.com.tw/Downloads/dow ... Down=false

This Linux Driver is now just about supported by all flavors of Linux including Ubuntu and Fedora. The Driver is known as RTS_PSTOR and if not included in your Linux Distro you can download the sources and compile it. The package includes a make file .. etc so its reasonable straight forward to install.

I’ve tested RTS_PSTOR under Ubuntu and Fedora and it works great.

So we have Linux based driver with sources that work.

The next problem is to start to figure out how to port it to OSX.

After much research and hunting in various forums I found that JMicron also manufacture a PCIe based card reader chipset known as the JMB38X and it like the RealTek chip is available in several versions but the one that is most interesting is the JMB385 this is essentially almost the same device as the Realtek RTS5209. The Device summary for the JMB385 can be viewed here: -

http://www.jmicron.com/Product_JMB385.htm

Like the RealTek device it to is compliant with the SDIO V2 Spec and like the Realtek device, JMicron have a Linux driver available, the exciting news about this device is that the Linux Driver has been successfully ported to OSX. The project can be reviewed along with the OSX sources here: -

http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/index. ... pic=132679

There is another open source PCIe Card Reader project which may be of help - please see this link

http://forum.voodooprojects.org/index.php?topic=972.0

Unfortunately I am no low-level device driver programmer but it seems to me that by combining the two projects we might be able to get a working driver. I’m not expecting it to be easy, I’ve got a little C++ application programming experience (but not on OSX) so its going to be a bit of a learning curve for me so if any of you guys want to pick up on this project please feel free. I’m happy to be an apprentice if any of the more experienced device-driver programmer’s want to take lead.

I am open to everyone’s advice and guidance on this project.
Cheers
Jay

 

[hill33]

Isn't there any progress or any information on this topic?

thanks.

 

[tdeghrtrdeh]

Anybody know of a kext to Realtek 10ec:5227?

links are broken in this thread.

 

[kosakgroove]

I also have 10ec:5227 which translates into Realtek 8411B card reader,
Anyone know of a kext for our internal realtek card readers?
What about VoodooSDHC?
Maybe Rehabman could engineer his way into a solution if he wanted

 

[RehabMan]

I also have 10ec:5227 which translates into Realtek 8411B card reader,
Anyone know of a kext for our internal realtek card readers?
What about VoodooSDHC?
Maybe Rehabman could engineer his way into a solution if he wanted

VoodooSDHC might be a starting point or a source for "sample code/clues".... but it would require a lot of work.

 

[kosakgroove]

VoodooSDHC might be a starting point or a source for "sample code/clues".... but it would require a lot of work.

Rehabman.. I think it would be definitely worth it for photographers and such. You could work on it slowly, and you can be sure you would have a lot of happy testers.. Please man, it would be really awesome..

 

[kosakgroove]

I know it might not be important for you, but i also know youve done way harderthings for the community. Youre a great coder, i know you can do it if you want

 

[AirAlarm]

Any news?

 

[iddpioneer]

Maybe AnyCardReader.kext can solve this problem?

I ll try it here... then I post here to say about the experience...

 

[ca3sa4]

Maybe AnyCardReader.kext can solve this problem?

I ll try it here... then I post here to say about the experience...

have u had any success with this kext?
can u post a link to it for others to test ?

thanks in advance