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

[Gerald Waugh <gwaugh@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Fri, 17 Oct 2003, Lyle Scheer wrote:

> 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

Obviously, a hardware engineers? prospective.
good to hear a different view!

Gerald
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