10 May
2007
10 May
'07
9:22 a.m.
On 10 May 2007 at 11:46, Warren Wolfe wrote:
Their operation might as well be magic for all I
know about them,
that's true, but, at a certain point, the functionality wins me over. I
can always tinker with old equipment, but, for me, the fact that all my
USB appliances work on all my machines with USB ports has always been a
given. Since I have just blundered into using USB, and the only
"technical" information I normally use is to insert the plug in the
orientation which puts the least strain on the fingers, it makes me
wonder if some folks here -- the ones with the bitter experiences --
might be over-engineering it. Just wondering.
Many of the problems associated with USB can be attributed solely to
faulty driver software. After bumbling around with USB support as an
add-on for Win95 (horrible), the geniuses at Redmond really did have
a good idea--layer the driver implementation into the baseline
drivers and device-specific "minidrivers" that would work with either
NT or Win98. Unfortunately, this was carried out with the usual
competence (or lack of it) that we associate with Windows software.
If memory serves, USB came rather late to Linux, most of the effort
being spearheaded by an on-again, off-again effort out of Spain(?).
In any case, it was a retrofit into the existing system device driver
structure.
Simple USB devices, such as floppy drives and CF card readers have
worked just fine for me. On the other hand, I have a box of USB
peripherals which don't operate in any fashion and whose
manufacturers have long been out of business (or who disavow ever
having built the damned things).
One of the big issues that I have with wholesale USB peripheral
implementation is the need for additional boxes (hubs) in my already
cluttered work area. Cables, cables everywhere with lots of little
dodads to get buried under the flotsam of paper and books.
That being said, I've got an HP scanner with both USB and SCSI
interfaces--and I use it in SCSI mode.
Cheers,
Chuck