Date: Fri, 29 Jan 1999 23:09:00 -0500 From: Drew Baxter <netmonger@genesis.ispace.com> To: Terry Lambert <tlambert@primenet.com>, patl@phoenix.volant.org Cc: tlambert@primenet.com, hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: USB drivers Message-ID: <4.1.19990129225730.00c70670@genesis.ispace.com> In-Reply-To: <199901300347.UAA22080@usr05.primenet.com> References: <ML-3.3.917638332.4143.patl@asimov>
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At 10:47 PM 1/29/99 , Terry Lambert wrote: >> > So maybe a box with just a power connector, a FW port and a USB hub >> > chip (to seperate the "A" and "B" devices). >> >> If you are talking about external connections, I think the Apple iMac >> only has power, USB, and audio-out connectors. (I don't know what they >> use for the internal devices; but I would suspect it's pretty standard >> PCI with IDE/ATAPI, etc.) >> >> Of course, the iMac does have one big problem - there's no PowerPC >> port of FreeBSD... > >It also has a nasty IDE interface, a nasty modem, a nasty ethernet >port, a nasty ATI graphics chip, a nasty sound chip. I wouldn't go as far to say that the ATI Graphics chip is crap.. The ATI Onboard for the Motorola Starmax was relatively decent. It's questionable if this is the same chipset they use on the IMac, but I've found that the embeddeds are just about the same. Give Mac credit somewhere though. Unfortunately no port of FreeBSD for PPC (yet..?) but at least you'd only have to have device drivers for the integrated hardware to start. After all, it's all the same between machines. >So even if you bought a bare motherboard, you'd end up with all >this useless, expensive crap nailed to it. Anything having to do with Mac is "useless expensive crap" :-) But they sell them cheap to K12's, so people buy into it still. To the point that my delusional High School Advanced Placement CompSci teacher bought 14 various "H3" Macintoshes. >If I needed any of that, I'd buy a USB or a firewire version, and >plug in whatever I needed (and _only_ whatever I needed). Yeah, but 999 bucks for those iMacs, they're selling like hotcakes.. People like a bunch of stuff in one little place, I guess. I wouldn't hesistate to put a Mac on running FreeBSD if the port was available. I will say that I found the RS/6000's to be relatively fast, and the ones I used had a PowerPC 601. As it goes I have a Mac sitting around that's a 603e, but I refuse to run Linux on it.. >I guess I could tolerate an SSD (solid state disk) socket... you >never know when you could use 78M of disk with PicoBSD on it. > > >Besides which, I'm pretty sure the motherboard is bigger than > > ``2.7" by 1.7" by .25" for a volume of about a cubic inch'' > > http://wearables.stanford.edu/ > >8-). I gotta get me one of them boards.. I'd imagine it'd fit into a basic hobby case from Digikey pretty easily. What I've always wondered is there are a few 'wearable' sites around, but none of them seem to have content on PC's you can actually physically 'wear' on a wrist or otherwise. I don't see my Velo (or a palmpilot) going on my wrist. Although, Seiko has developed the Ruputer (http://www.ruputer.com) which I must say, it a very intriguing design.. --- Drew "Droobie" Baxter Network Admin/Professional Computer Nerd(TM) OneEX: The OneNetwork Exchange, Bangor Maine USA http://www.droo.orland.me.us PGP ID: 409A1F7D To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message
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