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It may work with your PC. It seems some folks found that the BIOS could not detect it on bootup. At least, according to a discussion at usb.org and a few other places.

I did find a reference to an old key remapper. ZDNet actually made one a while ago called ZDKeyMap thet you can download at CNET. It says it only works with Windows 95 and on standard keys. You'd have to try it in Win98 and see if it still worked.

A better option may be JRkey. This project's goal is to create a generic, open-source, freeware multimedia keyboard driver for Windows 98. It looks promising, though it is still in Alpha.

Also, the Windows 2000 Server Resource Kit has a utility called Reymapkey.exe which is supposed to let you remap scancodes.

The Linux 2.4.7 Universal Serial Bus pegasus driver claims to support a bunch of Home Phone Networking Alliance devices. If the Linksys device is a version of these devices, you may be able to get support by just adding the appropriate vendor and product ID's to linux-2.4.7/drivers/usb/pegasus.h (and doing "cd /usr/src/linux && make modules && make modules_install && depmod && rmmod pegasus ; modprobe pegasus"). At the very least, reading pegasus.h will give you a list of USB HomePNA devices that should work with Linux.

Otherwise, you might want to dump the USB device and interface descriptors (by activating some debug option in the core Linux USB driver or by the lsusb program) and see if your device exports an interface compatible with the USB Communications Class (wish I had a pointer to it in non-PDF form), which I believe includes an ethernet subclass. In that case, it still might be a lot of work and a lot of learning for someone not familiar with Linux device drivers and USB, but you would at least have some documentation (see http://www.usb.org for tons of free-as-in-beer USB documents).

The Linux 2.4.7 Universal Serial Bus pegasus driver claims to support a bunch of Home Phone Networking Alliance devices. If the Linksys device is a version of these devices, you may be able to get support by just adding the appropriate vendor and product ID's to linux-2.4.7/drivers/usb/pegasus.h (and doing "cd /usr/src/linux && make modules && make modules_install && depmod && rmmod pegasus ; modprobe pegasus"). At the very least, reading pegasus.h will give you a list of USB HomePNA devices that should work with Linux.

Otherwise, you might want to dump the USB device and interface descriptors (by activating some debug option in the core Linux USB driver or by the lsusb program) and see if your device exports an interface compatible with the USB Communications Class (wish I had a pointer to it in non-PDF form), which I believe includes an ethernet subclass. In that case, it still might be a lot of work and a lot of learning for someone not familiar with Linux device drivers and USB, but you would at least have some documentation (see http://www.usb.org for tons of free-as-in-beer USB documents).

The keyboards were out before the PS2, actually. Sound like magic? It's not, it's just USB. ;^)

First, learn a little more about USB 2.0 here:

http://www.usb.org/developers/data/usb_20g.pdf

I really feel that USB 2.0 will be the dominant player in a few years. This won't be because of technical superiority as much as entrenchment and having a clear upgrade path.

As long as the cost of USB 2.0 PC interfaces comes down to close to that of USB 1.1, there will be no reason for motherboard manufacturers to not put the interface out there. The 2.0 ports can still talk to 1.1 hubs and peripherals, so in the beginning the end user will not see a difference.

Once enough machines are out there with USB 2.0 interfaces you will see some peripheral manufacturers start to migrate over as well. People will always have a mix of 1.1 and 2.0 components being that they will coexist on the system using the same string of cables. However, in time, 2.0 ports will be the only thing you find on new PC motherboards.

Now, think in terms of a motherboard manufacturer. This is a commodity market and cutting costs is essential. These motherboards already support USB 1.1. They know they will be replacing the 1.1 ports with 2.0 ports. These manufacturers are going to ask themselves, "why should I put two incompatable high speed interfaces on the board?" To take it to a further extreme, in a few years I expect to see many motherboards coming out without old fashioned serial and parallel ports. Even the keyboard and mouse ports could be endangered if the cost of the USB keyboard and mice come down.

Firewire is likely to be out there for a long time to come. It will probably dominate the A/V world being that USB was never targeted to that market. However, except in high-end situtations, I don't think we will ever see a lot of motherboards including direct FireWire support. It will remain an add-in card for most people.

Microsoft will eventually support USB 2.0. They are just going to wait until real hardware shows up. This is the same scenario they are taking with Bluetooth support. Intel or other hardware manufacturers will release add-on software for Windows to handle USB 2.0 until Microsoft integrates it into the OS. It has been done before and it will be done again.

I can believe that. However I was going by this page (near the bottom) which lists MS as an original core member.

The USB Implementor's forum has defined some Content Security standards, evidently using a slightly different technical approach (different group of companies pushing it).

I'd be interested in comments from Andre about (a) whether this indicates fragmentation among advocates of copy controls, confusion, or perhaps something sinister; (b) how creators of USB-to-ATAPI style bridge products (usb storage devices) would decide which style copy control scheme to implement, assuming they really wanted to do so, (c) the degree having different copy control systems may be defensive efforts to make hardware products stop being commodities.

On issue (c), I just want to point out that consumers benefit from commodity products as much as they benefit from commodity data formats for the information they've acquired ... while vendors of both hardware and digitized data can see both of those as significant threats to business strategies that rely on vendor control rather than providing customer value.

USB has something that's purely layered. I've not looked at it: Content Security (scroll down a bit), by folk from Intel, Microsoft, and Philips; dated summer Y2K.

That's not "part of USB" but I sure hope we don't start to see it show up in products. Like USB disk drives or MP3 players, for starters.

I have serious reservations about such attempts to remove the discretionary/social control aspects from copy control policies. This whole gig about criminalizing behaviors that have traditionally been civil issues or non-issues just sends shivers down my spine.

Remember: When government gets smaller, that means the abuses are only going to be committed by even less accountable organizations.

As weird as it might sound, reading the article (!) put me In The Know(TM). It's USB. I have no experience with USB myself, but from what I've read, handling of human-interface stuff like keyboards and mice is pretty much standard. If Intel do this right, their wireless stuff should just show up as standard peripherals, then. Let's hope. ;^) On a related but different note, doesn't anyone worry about how these wireless things should be powered? Having to worry about batteries and/or charge levels in my mouse and keyboard doesn't sound like a lot of fun...

Since the PS2 uses USB, keyboard availability shouldn't be a (hardware) problem. Any standard USB keyboard should work. It's interesting to note that Microsoft, in their infinite wisdom, have chosen to use all parts except the connector of the USB standard for the Xbox. This means that while the machine could communicate with any keyboard, you can't connect it, since the plug won't fit. Also, in a recent interview, they stressed the point that the Xbox is a console, not a slimmed-down PC. Weird. Perhaps they don't know about Turbine? ;^)

There's an IDE to USB adapter that would let you use your existing CDROM.

Good question. Basically, USB is a lot more versatile than SCSI, though there would be some debate over this, I'm sure.

With USB, there is no hardware configuration to be done - you can plug the devices into each other in any order, into the computer or a hub, and you can chain hubs. It's very simple for a user to connect things with USB. SCSI, on the other hand, requires you to set a device ID for each device (usually 0 to 7, I think) and each device in the chain has a priority associated with it, and that is fixed.

The real power of USB is how nice it is from a software driver point of view. If the host OS supports USB (and this would be the difficult part) then writing a device driver is easy. You get a clean software interface, and your driver isn't even loaded until the USB host driver has determined that your device has actually been connected and is receiving power. It's true plug and play (and hot pluggable). The host can even do power management, so even though you might not be able to run your printer and scanner at the same time, the host can power down the one that isn't in use, and allocate that power to the other device, all without you having to worry about it.

Needless to say, the easier it is for the end user, the more difficult it is for us... :)

Also, if you really want to see an amazing technology, check out BlueTooth! Wires of any kind might soon be a thing of the past.

And I'm glad to report it was successful - the docs are back where they belong, at
http://www.usb.org/developers/devclass. html.

Unfortunately, slashdot rejected the news item on it - seems bashing someone is better than reporting they fixed it. :/

Did Anyone notice the not on the main USB page saying this...

USB-IF Members Only Area

Dear USB-IF Members,

Due to security reasons, all USB-IF member passwords have been changed on Tuesday, 29th February 2000. Member representatives have been emailed new passwords. If you have not received your new passwords yet, please contact your company's USB IF Representative. We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused everyone. We are working on resolving the issues around this.

USB-IF Administration

I don't know if these are the classes that you were talking about, but I had no problems getting to http://www.usb.org/developers/devc lass_docs.html at all.

I looks like you can access the devclass documents now. I just went to http://www.usb.org/developers/devclass.html and a login is no longer required. Only the "Approved Class specifications" docs are available though... the Draft documents are not there. Hmmmm....



"Pioneers get arrows in the back. Settlers get the land. I'm happy letting Linux be the pioneers."

One bus to rule them all
One bus to find them
One bus to bring them all
And in the darkness bind them

There's some discussion of the specs being closed going on over on the usb.org developers webboard.

Click on "Microsoft Corp" in "Search by Company":

http://www.usb.org/app/search/contacts/

Tux has defected!

On the Developer Site, there is a link labeled USB Device Class Specifications. Immediately underneath, it says: (USB-IF member username and password required). If you click on the link, it asks for a username and password. Therefore, it is locked on the developer side.

If you know of an official link to the Device Class Specifications on the USB site that is not locked, please post it here and to the Linux-USB mailing list.

----

On the Developer Site, there is a link labeled USB Device Class Specifications. Immediately underneath, it says: (USB-IF member username and password required). If you click on the link, it asks for a username and password. Therefore, it is locked on the developer side.

If you know of an official link to the Device Class Specifications on the USB site that is not locked, please post it here and to the Linux-USB mailing list.

----

http://www.usb.org/app/db/search/contacts/ Look at the source to get a bunch of Vendor IDs. Then append "-admin" and use that as a username and password.

From a quick look at www.usb.org, there seems to be a lot of documentation still available, including most older documentation.

The only document that seems to be restricted are those from the 1999 USB 2.0 conference. This may be a bad thing, but right now it looks like its just an attempt to prevent incompatible standards.

Either that or something I missed entirely is blocked.

USB Promoters:-

• Compaq
• Hewlett Packard
• Intel
• Lucent Technologies
• Microsoft
• NEC
• Philips

USB Promoters:-

• Compaq
• Hewlett Packard
• Intel
• Lucent Technologies
• Microsoft
• NEC
• Philips

Lets see.. Arnt we confusing something here? Maybe you ment Developers instead of members. A member of USB would be one of the founding companies (ie. M$ and Intel). A developer would be you and me. I dont see any locks on the developer site.

:)
--

• http://www.usb.org/developers/docs.html
• http://electr icrain.com/lists/archive/linux-usb/2000/02/msg0103 5.html
• http://electr icrain.com/lists/archive/linux-usb/2000/02/msg0105 5.html

--

>Doesn't USB require CPU to service the bus? I can imagine that USB Ethernet would be a slooow ordeal.

Ick, I hope not, I would think that it would take no more CPU than any other PCI device (except IDE, it was designed with ISA in mind and has no provision for non-CPU control). I tried to find more information but the closest I got was the USB Developers FAQ, their website seems to be fact unfriendly.

I just checked out the USB FAQ and it stated that USB: 12Mbits/s (1.5MBYTES/s). Surely enough for 10Mbit Ethernet and serial modems. If there are no QoS features that prevent one device from monopolizing the bus that's bad but I don't believe that is true.

If companies are shipping USB-based hard drives, then I would agree that their developers are on something stronger than the legally-sanctioned mix of caffeine and pizza.

If companies are developing USB-based hard drives, then that's perfectly reasonable; the upcoming USB 2.0 will raise the USB bus's bandwidth to around 50 megabytes/second, more than enough for a fast hard disk.

I do find it amusing that USB 2.0 is aggressively pushed in the developers' section of the USB site, but only mentioned in passing on the consumer side, and not mentioned at all in the consumer FAQ. We wouldn't want to give consumers reason to wait instead of rushing to the store for the current generation of products, would we? (On a less cynical note, USB 1 peripherals will work on the USB 2 bus, and USB 2 peripherals can be designed to fall back to USB 1 speeds; so if you're a masochist, you'll be able to hook that USB 2 hard drive up to your current USB ports, and blaze along at a breathtaking 1.5 megabytes per second. I can see the advertising now; "Get the power of a hard drive with the speed of CD-ROM!")

If companies are shipping USB-based hard drives, then I would agree that their developers are on something stronger than the legally-sanctioned mix of caffeine and pizza.

If companies are developing USB-based hard drives, then that's perfectly reasonable; the upcoming USB 2.0 will raise the USB bus's bandwidth to around 50 megabytes/second, more than enough for a fast hard disk.

I do find it amusing that USB 2.0 is aggressively pushed in the developers' section of the USB site, but only mentioned in passing on the consumer side, and not mentioned at all in the consumer FAQ. We wouldn't want to give consumers reason to wait instead of rushing to the store for the current generation of products, would we? (On a less cynical note, USB 1 peripherals will work on the USB 2 bus, and USB 2 peripherals can be designed to fall back to USB 1 speeds; so if you're a masochist, you'll be able to hook that USB 2 hard drive up to your current USB ports, and blaze along at a breathtaking 1.5 megabytes per second. I can see the advertising now; "Get the power of a hard drive with the speed of CD-ROM!")

If companies are shipping USB-based hard drives, then I would agree that their developers are on something stronger than the legally-sanctioned mix of caffeine and pizza.

If companies are developing USB-based hard drives, then that's perfectly reasonable; the upcoming USB 2.0 will raise the USB bus's bandwidth to around 50 megabytes/second, more than enough for a fast hard disk.

I do find it amusing that USB 2.0 is aggressively pushed in the developers' section of the USB site, but only mentioned in passing on the consumer side, and not mentioned at all in the consumer FAQ. We wouldn't want to give consumers reason to wait instead of rushing to the store for the current generation of products, would we? (On a less cynical note, USB 1 peripherals will work on the USB 2 bus, and USB 2 peripherals can be designed to fall back to USB 1 speeds; so if you're a masochist, you'll be able to hook that USB 2 hard drive up to your current USB ports, and blaze along at a breathtaking 1.5 megabytes per second. I can see the advertising now; "Get the power of a hard drive with the speed of CD-ROM!")

OK, I'm actually at the USB 2.0 Devcon right now, and have read the 2.0 proposed spec, so I'll take a stab at refuting these comments:

1.The usb.org article only claims "120-240Mbps". It's not clear where the ign.com article came up with 480Mbps.
The speed is 480Mbs. That is what the spec says.

2.Even if USB2 runs at 480Mbps, the Firewire folks aren't exactly standing still. Any raw bandwidth advantage of USB2 is sure to be short-lived at best.
Firewire and USB have too many things that are not in common, they really are not competitors. USB is aimed to be a PC centric bus. There has to be only one host, and a whole lot of clients. Firewire can be host to host. Firewire is more intrenched in the consumer electronic market, while USB is sticking to the PC (for now).

3.There's lots of blather in the USB2 announcement about supporting video cameras etc. but IIRC USB doesn't support the isochronous transfers which are usually considered necessary to serve those markets. Did I miss something?
You missed something. USB has always supported isochronous transfers. Look at the USB speakers from Philips for an example of a shipping product that uses this. Isochronous is still there for 2.0.

4.Another useful Firewire feature that USB doesn't seem to have is providing power through the same connector used for communications. Again, I may have missed it.
USB has ALWAYS supported power on the connector. How else does some of the devices work? 2.0 does not change this. It's still 5V at 100mA-500mA depending on what you need and ask for. If you need more power, take a look at the Plus Power Connector that IBM supports for USB. It can provide 12V or 24V at 3A. That's about all the current that anyone needs.

5.I don't remember how many devices USB supports, but I suspect it's less than Firewire.
USB supports 127 devices per host controller. You can plug in more than one host controller in your PC at a time. The record (I think) for most devices plugged in and working at once is around 144.

6.I know that USB-based host-to-host networking exists, but it's not clear to me whether it's really as well suited to that task as Firewire. In particular, I wonder how much asymmetry between hosts and devices (a la initiators and targets in SCSI) is built into the protocol, and how round-trip latency compares to other technologies.
As I said above, USB is a host-client bus. You can make (and buy) a device that does networking over USB from one computer to another, but this is just two client devices talking together in a box. Firewire can do true host to host on the bus itself. The USB protocol is a star topology with the PC host controller at the top. I can look up the round trip latency stuff somewhere, but it is built into the protocol, and the host and hub controllers seem to handle it well.

7.Similarly, I'd like seeing a comparison of how automagically reconfiguration happens when devices are added or removed using each technology.
I don't really know how Firewire does this at all, but USB handles this wonderfully. There is a description of how the protocol handles all of this in the spec (at www.usb.org).
In summary, USB 2.0 looks like it handles a lot of the speed issues that some people had with 1.1. It provides backward compatibility with all 1.1 and 1.0 devices and enables things like speakers and video cameras to run better.
Like it or not, USB looks to be here for a while. A lot of computers are coming out without a lot of different connectors, and USB is replacing them.

Ob Linux: USB is working on Linux in the 2.3.x series of kernels (it's also supported a little in the 2.2.x series, but not for many devices.) More information is at www.linux-usb.org

SCSI scanners, on the other hand, are much easier to support, because there's a generic spec for scanning over SCSI. I've also noticed USB scanners appearing in stores; judging by the USB device class documents, USB scanners will be closer to SCSI than parallel-port. While there's no document on that page which mentions scanners, USB does seem to work by having different devices supporting the same interface. So maybe, once USB replaces the parallel port at the low end, we won't have to worry about getting stuck with a scanner that doesn't work.