RE : [cobalt-users] Re: USB drive on Raq4

["Alain Fontaine" <alain@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Hello,

That's a very interesting way of thinking. One question pops up - from what
cost on would these people have said "no, it's too expensive for something
that is of no use". Or, put the other way around - how much money would you
throw out of the window before it starts to hurt? ;)

---

Alain Fontaine		
Director

VAlain S.A.	
27 rue Knupp
L-9535 Wiltz		
Luxembourg

www.valain.lu


-----Message d'origine-----
De : cobalt-users-admin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:cobalt-users-admin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] De la part de Lyle Scheer
Envoyé : vendredi 17 octobre 2003 17:18
À : cobalt-users@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Objet : Re: [cobalt-users] Re: USB drive on Raq4


On Thu, 2003-10-16 at 19:19, Thom LaCosta wrote:
> On Thu, 16 Oct 2003, Bruce Timberlake wrote:
> 
> > The USB ports were added to all the appliances thinking that someday 
> > support would be added... ended up being more of a tease than 
> > anything
> 
> And then Sun bought the product line and we moved from tease to 
> something else.

I'd actually rephrase what Bruce said a little...

The chips we were using had USB functionality included among other
functionality, but were not selected because we wanted to design with USB.

Linux at the time did not yet support USB, but there were plans for the
linux kernel to support it.

To run the USB signal to the edge of the board required one trace on the
PCBA, and we had the space, so we ran it.

The connector cost something like five cents, so we added it in case it
turned out to be useful.

There were never any design intentions to use it, but it was cheap enough to
say, why not?  There were some folks at the time who said, "if we put this
in, customers might expect us to do something with it, so we shouldn't put
it in."  However, the, "it's cheap, let's put it in anyway" group won the
day.

- Lyle


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