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To: Richard Habib who wrote (13200)	5/8/1998 4:36:00 PM
From: Richard Habib	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 213177

Bill, here is an article describing USB from PC Mag USB Device Preview We take an early look at ten of the first PC peripherals to use the Universal Serial Bus. Full USB support is on the horizon with the release of Microsoft Windows 98 Daniel Grotta & Sally Wiener Grotta The age of the Universal Serial Bus (USB) is coming--and soon. Already, virtually all new PCs and laptops are equipped with USB ports, and Windows 95 OSR/2 provides limited USB support. And by the time Windows 98 (which will offer extensive built-in USB support) ships, we'll see the first onslaught of a wide variety of USB peripherals. In practical terms, this means that eventually all of your low-speed peripherals could very well be USB devices. These peripherals include keyboards, mice, printers, joysticks, modems, scanners, digital cameras, speakers, and even telephones and fingerprint ID systems. On paper, USB offers several unassailable advantages over parallel and serial devices. USB peripherals are designed from day one as true Windows Plug and Play devices. There are no boards to install and no jumpers, dip switches, or IRQs to set. Better still, all USB devices are hot swappable and can be recognized and initialized without forcing you to reboot your computer. USB data transfers have both isochronous and asynchronous throughput of up to 12 Mbps; that's 3 to 5 times faster than parallel devices and more than 20 to 40 times faster than serial ports. The cables can be up to 5 meters in length, and the connectors are slim and compact. Best of all, you can use USB to attach up to 127 devices to the root hub without worrying about IRQs. All this may be true, but after testing ten of the first USB products on or about to hit the market, we found that USB--at least at the present stage of development--isn't always easy or trouble-free to install and operate. Caveat Emptor The first surprise we encountered was that early USB iterations may not even work at all. Before the USB Consortium agreed on standards last year, many motherboard manufacturers jumped the gun and added their own versions of USB ports. The USB Consortium does not guarantee compatibility or compliance by nonmember motherboard manufacturers. Be cautioned, though, that most of these boards will not work with today's USB products. Another widespread glitch is that many computer manufacturers routinely ship PCs with USB turned off in the BIOSes. But once you know where to look, it's easy to toggle USB on. Then there's the matter of power. Normally, the USB port outputs up to 500 milliamps (mA) of downstream power. That's more than enough juice to power a keyboard, mouse, joystick, or sheet-fed scanner. But it may not be enough electricity for multiple low-powered peripherals, and it's certainly not enough for devices with higher power requirements, such as printers or speakers. This is why powered hubs will become such important accessories. Theoretically, it's possible to add up to 127 individual devices between the two ports. But for technical reasons, it's not practical for a single hub to have more than eight ports per hub or for hubs to be stacked more than five deep. If you were to daisy-chain five hubs together, you would cut the number of attached USB devices to 36 per port. Although there are scores of products waiting in the wings, most manufacturers have delayed introducing USB peripherals until Windows 98 is officially released. At present, Windows 95 OSR/2 Rev B USB drivers support only certain peripherals. You'll need Windows 98 Beta 3 to operate the other products unsupported. Because the drivers are still being tweaked, you may have to set various parameters manually in order to get things working properly. One final note: USB is only half of the high-speed plug-and-play revolution coming to a computer near you. 1394 (FireWire) is poised to replace IDE, EIDE, and even (in some instances) SCSI. Like USB, 1394 devices are hot swappable and will eventually be able to transfer data at speeds up to 50 MBps.Together, USB and 1394 should make your computer both easier and faster to use.