First Computer Store

[Guy Sotomayor]

On 7/26/15 12:15 PM, Chuck Guzis wrote:
> On 07/26/2015 06:12 AM, tony duell wrote:
>>>
>>> Remember when USB was referred to as the Useless Serial Bus after
>>> it was introduced? I think it was a solid 1-2 years after it was
>>> introduced that I began to notice peripherals designed for it.
>>
>> I still call it 'Useless Serial Botch' most of the time. It's not a
>> bus, after all.
>
>
> The first USB devices were utterly terrible--I've got a few that work 
> only with certain controllers--modern controllers are absolutely blind 
> to the things.
>
> It seems to me (and I'll defer to more experienced hands) that USB is 
> not wonderful for single- or low-count byte transfers; that the 
> negotiation overhead makes short transfers rather problematic, 
> particularly where the topology involves multiple hubs.  In other 
> words, USB is well-suited to block transfers.
>
> Is this a fair assessment?
>
> And the proliferation of unofficial VID and PIDs seems to be an issue, 
> particularly with Chinese-origin devices. "Squatting" seems to be a 
> practice also:  VID 0001 = Fry's Electronics;  0004 = Nebraska 
> Furniture Mart--really?  I've found Chinese USB devices squatting on 
> the Linksys VID, with a non-Linksys PID.
>
> Really, it's a mess.

Saw the same thing with ethernet controllers that were "clones" of DEC's 
2114x chips.  Some of them had PCI vendor and device codes that 
indicated they were DEC but weren't.  They also didn't behave properly 
in all cases.

The whole VID & PID works because of "gentleman's agreements" (ie use 
your own VID and don't pretend to be someone else's).  It's not clear 
how to solve this for folks that don't follow the rules.

TTFN - Guy