I would welcome a native Linux version of the front end software. Is there anyone else interested?

We don't have any plans to develop a Linux version simply because of the very low price point of the 1480A Analyzer. Creating a Linux version would require device drivers and the whole application to be completely re-created from scratch (simply too expensive). You can of course still capture data from a Linux system, only the Analysis PC needs to Run Windows XP/Vista.

I would be willing to do a linux capture front-end if I could get hold of the USB protocol to talk to the analyser and the necessary data to upload.

Thanks for the offer. For the time being we however have no plans of making the 1480A an 'open source' unit on Linux. We might reconsider if there is enough Linux demand.

I would also be delighted to see a Linux version around and I am willing to help & test as necessary. Open source rules!

Thanks for the offer. We however don't have the resources to synchronize a Linux project at this time. The FPGA hardware must always be in synch with the PC software protocol-wise so it will not manage itself.

+1 for native Linux support.

Some ideas out the top of my head:
- writing a libusb-based driver should be relatively easy (as in, independant from linux kernel release-cycle synchronisation)
- writing a wireshark dissector might be an easy way to provide support without having to write a GUI and many function wireshark already supports
[EDIT] note that this way might become a dead-end if wireshark interface turns out to be too restricted...

Creating a Linux-based software and drivers is not as easy as one might think. We are using drivers supplied by Cypress to interface with the FX2LP USB Controller in the 1480A unit. Even we don't know the details of code download and data upload. Of course, all this could be reverse engineered with a large effort but as previously stated, given the small market demand, we don't have the man-power to get involved in a Linux application.

I have started reverse-engineering to get it to run under Linux.
I've been able to upload the first firmware (FX2LP one) and I'm currently working on FPGA firmware upload.

I had to do was to understand Cypress' SPT file format and generate an IHX file from it, and upload it using existing FX2 development program (cycfx2prog, there is also fxload but it refused to parse IHX files I generated for some reason).

Some random notes on FX2 firmware:
- SPT file contains actually 2 firmwares, of which the first seems to be a boot loader from Cypress as it implements bmRequest = 0xA3.
- CyUSB.dll contains an embedded firmware in IHX format, but it probably isn't used (it's not even mentioned in CyUSB's documentation AFAICT).

Some random notes on FPGA firmware:
- There doesn't seem to be a documentation on the RBF file format (it's the first time I look into FPGAs, so it might not be news for no-one but me)
- Progress on this part will be slower than FX2 firmware as I need to understand the ASM code running on the FX2:
- it uses endpoint 1 (bulk, out)
- with full 64 bytes requests only (smaller requests seems to be discarded by the firmware)
- starting with a byte telling what to do with the other 63 bytes (but I haven't been further than the first byte yet, so I don't know if the remaining bytes contain further commands/options)

If progress updates are welcome, I'll happily continue posting/editing them here.
Otherwise, feel free to delete/edit this post, I'll get the message.

Feel free to reverse engineer and create the Linux software. However, we don't have the man-power to monitor and to comment/correct the information posted here.