What's the point of USB keyboards+mice = Re: EPROM and EEPROM

'Pound shops' over here sometimes sell an in-car USB charger, it plugs into the cigar lighter socket (12V DC input) and gives out 5V at either 500mA or 1A depending on which version they have in stock. They're actually quite nice little swithcing regulators (IC + inductor + flyback diode + a few passibes), I certainly couldn't get the bits for a pound. I've even desoldered the ICs from them as it's cheaper than the 1-off price of the IC. Go figure... I haev one of those boxes fo 16 different power conenctor tips (mostly the coaxial barrel types, but also 2.5mm and 3.5mm jack (phone) plugs) and a cable with a socket to take those on one end and 4mm plugs on the other. Used with my bench supply, it's very useful for powering all sorts of devices... One thign that IMHO USB did get right was to haev a power line on the interface conenctor. Many times with other interfaces I've needed to invert a sgnal line, or do a little bit of logic on them, or something and don't want to have an external PSU. HP ggot that right on the HP9000/200 series RS232 ports (and on some HP temrinals, etc). Those ports are acutally on a 50 pin Microribbon connector (!). not only ar pins assigned for both RS232 and RS422 signals (although not all units implemented the latter), there are also +5V, +12V and -12V power pins. Very useful... I modified my HP82165 HPIL-GPIO (parallel) interfces to have a 2.5mm jack socket connefted to 5V lien and ground. It's enough to power a few TTL ICs if I need to ness about with the handshake lines or invert the data lines or something. Saves carting the bench supply around... -tony