From owner-freebsd-hackers Wed Jan 5 7:24:42 2000 Delivered-To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Received: from webweaving.org (dialfwn11.fwn.rug.nl [129.125.32.161]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 5A893153CE for ; Wed, 5 Jan 2000 07:24:33 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from n_hibma@webweaving.org) Received: from localhost (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by webweaving.org (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id MAA02133; Tue, 4 Jan 2000 12:20:15 +0100 (CET) (envelope-from n_hibma@webweaving.org) Date: Tue, 4 Jan 2000 12:20:15 +0100 (CET) From: Nick Hibma X-Sender: n_hibma@localhost Reply-To: Nick Hibma To: Nate Williams Cc: freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: USB vs. parallel port In-Reply-To: <199912261614.JAA07297@mt.sri.com> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG Whether or not the system is loaded or not depends mainly on what hardware you have. OHCI tends to load the system a lot less than UHCI (Intel). But compared to serial and parallel ports, USB is a lot better. Most of the transaction is done per DMA and with large quantities it outperforms both of them in every way. 300Kb/s at less than 1% CPU should be no problem. I have no idea what the load on the PCI bus is though. That might be a problem as there are a lot of small transfers over that bus. By the way, at the moment it is better to have a UHCI controller on your motherboard. Allthough the OHCI controller is much smarter and more efficient, support for it is not as stable as the support for UHCI controllers. Nick > A co-worker is looking into buying a printer, and was wondering which > kind would be better, USB and/or parallel. (There are also some that do > both). > > Parallel printers tend to load down the system when busy, but serial > devices tend to load them down even more, although USB is a whole > different animal. > > What are the trade-offs? > > Thanks for any help you can provide! > > > Nate > > > To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org > with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message > -- n_hibma@webweaving.org n_hibma@freebsd.org USB project http://www.etla.net/~n_hibma/ To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message