Date: Fri, 29 Jan 1999 22:03:39 -0800 (PST) From: patl@phoenix.volant.org To: Terry Lambert <tlambert@primenet.com> Cc: hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: USB drivers Message-ID: <ML-3.3.917676219.1406.patl@asimov> In-Reply-To: <199901300347.UAA22080@usr05.primenet.com>
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> > > So maybe a box with just a power connector, a FW port and a USB hub > > > chip (to seperate the "A" and "B" devices). > > > > If you are talking about external connections, I think the Apple iMac > > only has power, USB, and audio-out connectors. (I don't know what they > > use for the internal devices; but I would suspect it's pretty standard > > PCI with IDE/ATAPI, etc.) > > > > Of course, the iMac does have one big problem - there's no PowerPC > > port of FreeBSD... > > It also has a nasty IDE interface, a nasty modem, a nasty ethernet > port, a nasty ATI graphics chip, a nasty sound chip. Ok, so you're NOT talking about just external connections. I couldn't tell from you original posting. > So even if you bought a bare motherboard, you'd end up with all > this useless, expensive crap nailed to it. Somehow I suspect that it's still cheaper than USB or FireWire versions. After all, IDE is basicly still alive because it's cheaper than SCSI. > If I needed any of that, I'd buy a USB or a firewire version, and > plug in whatever I needed (and _only_ whatever I needed). > > I guess I could tolerate an SSD (solid state disk) socket... you > never know when you could use 78M of disk with PicoBSD on it. > > > Besides which, I'm pretty sure the motherboard is bigger than > > ``2.7" by 1.7" by .25" for a volume of about a cubic inch'' > > http://wearables.stanford.edu/ Yep, this falls into the class of machines where USB and/or FireWire would be an excellent choice. But then, this is also the sort of application where you're paying a significant bonus for small size and reduced parts count. But your original posting sounded like you were proposing a general- purpose desktop or notebook machine which only offered power, USB, and FireWire as external connectors. For that you'd need to be much closer to price/performance parity with more traditional designs. -Pat To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message
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