OT: btld problem??

[Brian K. White]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: <SmittyUSN1 at aol.com>
To: "filePro List" <FILEPRO-LIST at SEASLUG.ORG>
Sent: Monday, August 14, 2006 2:55 PM
Subject: Re: OT: btld problem??


> No Offense Brian....
>
> I just know this is going to arouse the list fairy but I just had to say I
> have a plastic drawer full (10 at least) of  USB memory sticks, 
> jumpdrives,
> etc.etc., ver 1.0 & 2.0 , asst. meg sizes,  the best one is my Lexar 2gig 
> stick
> (holds a raft of fp files).  Every stick in the drawer will work right now 
> on
> any Windows box, USB equipped customer I have (about a dozen) for the last 
> 5-6
> years....groan.
>
> I just had to say something good here about Windows (XP anyway)  as it 
> takes
> a thorough beating in here.
>
> I can imagine the pain in the  Linux (mulitple versions), SCO (couple of
> versions) that a  technical advancement like the  USB memory stick is,  it 
> must
> cause havoc in maintaining the drivers base in the assorted OPS.
>
> Well now that I got that off my chest ....yall get back to it.

Oh no offense at all.
I use usb a lot myself on windows like everyone else.
And on Linux too, especially keyboards and mice. Just nothing too important 
other than these days I'll tolerate if a Linux box has no ps/2 ports meaning 
I _must_ use usb keyboard & mouse on it. This is because I've been using usb 
keyboards & mice on linux for a long time already where it wasn't important 
and haven't had much of a problem anywhere.

At home I have this awsome usb wireless (rf not infrared) keyboard with 
built in touch pad that I use with a diskless thin client hooked to the vga 
input on my plasma tv in my living room.
But, that required a very recent version of linux to deal with the odd way 
that 3 or 4 logical devices (keyboard, built-in touchpad mouse, another 
seperate mouse, and a hid type device for some extra buttons) were combined 
into one usb interface (the usb wireless receiver), and even though it's 
been working in linux for over a year, freebsd still can't use this device 
fully (only the keyboarde works, neither mouse or the extra buttons) I hate 
to think what it would be like trying to get sco to use it.

On my desk at work that hp laserjet 3015 is hooked via usb for the scanner 
part even though it has a print server on it. But that's hooked to my 
desktop, not any server.

Even on linux I still wouldn't rely on it for much else though like the 
network connection or the tape drive or a disk drive. For one thing, usb 
consumes lots of cpu. Just copying data at full speed (480mbit) to/from a 
usb2 hard drive will eat anywhere from 20 to 100 % of even a 2 or 3ghz 
machine. Some devices consume lots of cpu due to polling whether they are in 
heavy use or idle. Thats ANY OS not a linux/freebsd/unix issue. That's fine 
on desktops because a desktop is a single user. 100% of the machine can be 
busy for 5 or 10 minutes copying a few gigs of data to/from a usb drive. Or 
repeatedly/momentarily busy doing a scan or a print. Or 5 or 10% continuous 
overhead to run an audio device or tv tuner etc...
Thats why firewire exists. At almost the same speed  (400mbit) or almost 
double speed (800mbit) firewire will only eat about 5%.

You don't want any of that on a server. Keyboards and mice are ok because 
they generate very little data when busy, are rarely busy anyways, and don't 
eat cpu when idle. Mass storage is ok if it's just odd occasional things 
like using a thumb drive to load/unload stuff during maintenance. I wouldn't 
do nightly backups via usb or use a permanently installed external usb drive 
for mass hard drive space.

Brian K. White  --  brian at aljex.com  --  http://www.aljex.com/bkw/
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