Dave Andrews
Months after the first PCs with universal serial bus (USB) ports started shipping, peripherals for the low-to-mid-speed peripheral-connection bus are finally becoming widely available. At the same time, vendors are developing products and solutions that allow older PCs and peripherals to plug into the USB environment.
A
variety of
USB products -- ranging from keyboards, joysticks, and mice to USB ports, videoconferencing cameras, monitors, and other peripherals -- were shipping or expected to begin shipping by the end of 1997. Some of these products include new USB speakers from Altec Lansing; new videoconferencing cameras, including Kodak's DVC 300 (about $199); Xirlink's $199 Video Phone; and Connectix's QuickCam. Also available for USB are monitors (including flat-panel displays) from Compaq, Mitsubishi, Samsung, and others.
USB enables you to connect as many as 127 USB devices to your system; its total bandwidth of 12 Mbps is sufficient for low- to medium-speed peripherals, such as keyboards, mice, joysticks, scanners, cameras, phones, monitors, and so on. The technology allows you to plug and unplug devices to and from a system, and it will eventually eliminate the need to have multiple parallel and serial ports coming out of the back of your PC.
Other benefits of USB vary, depending on the product. For example, Xirlink officials say the company's Video Phone camera can deliver improved frame rates, not only because of its on-board video-compression chip but because one mode of USB guarantees delivery for time-sensitive applications, such as videoconferencing.
Another benefit: With monitors such as Samsung's SyncMaster 700Up 17-inch CRT (with 15.7 inches of viewable area, $1019), there's no need to twid
dle knobs to adjust the image; instead, you do all the necessary adjustments via the mouse or the keyboard. The monitor also has three powered USB ports. This lets the monitor act as a hub for other USB devices without requiring each device to have a separate power cord.
Expect to see USB keyboards coming out with on-board USB ports, too, although many keyboard makers are waiting for less-expensive single-chip solutions (e.g., USB controller and hub chips combined) to arrive from the likes of Intel and Cypress Semiconductor. USB game devices, such as Alps's forthcoming GamePad, which supports a wide variety of PC games, will benefit from USB's support for multiplayer participation.
PC telephony can also benefit from USB, says Bill Beck, head of the Mitel Personal Assistant Program at Mitel (Kanata, Ontario, Canada), which plans to release two new USB-enabled PC phones in the second quarter of this year. Mitel's single- and dual-line phones will join the company's already-available "USB-ready" Personal Assistant product, which adds computer telephony to your PC. "With USB, you can open multiple virtual channels into the PC," Beck says. This means that if you have dual-line support in your telephony-enabled PC, USB's bandwidth will let two people leave separate voice messages simultaneously, instead of one having to wait until the other is finished. USB, combined with improved network support for voice traffic, will also improve the quality of voice-over-IP applications.
But several caveats exist with USB. For one, the version of Windows that you use might not support USB. USB currently works only with the newer version of Windows 95, called OSR2.1, that started shipping on new PCs early in 1997. If you're uncertain whether your version of Win 95 supports USB, go to the System Properties menu in the Control Panel to check the version of Win 95 that's installed on your system. If you have version 4.00950B or later, then your machine is USB ready.
Furthermore, if it's not relatively new, your PC might not have USB ports. And what about your old peripherals? Luckily, several vendors provide solutions for bringing older equipment up to speed with USB.
One such company is CMD Technology (Irvine, CA). Its CSA-6700 PCI-to-USB controller board lets peripheral vendors bundle a new USB device with a PCI card that adds two USB ports. The company is also providing vendors with a device-driver kit for the board that lets vendors write a driver that will work with older versions of Windows 3.x and 95, as well as other OSes.
Another company providing legacy support is Central Data (Champaign, IL), with its USB Port Server. This product lets existing serial devices, such as printers and modems, connect to USB. Why would you want to do that? One reason is interrupts, which can become scarce on a PC because they're needed by sound cards, modems, Ethernet controllers, and other devices. Connecting four serial devices to a USB hub takes only one interrupt in your PC, according to Mark Decker, a spokesman for Central Data. Another product, from Northstar Systems (Rancho Cucamonga, CA), lets you connect parallel devices to USB ports.
Some vendors will delay releasing USB products to the retail channel until Win 98, which will have full support for USB devices, ships. But for folks with USB today, products are here.
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Central Data's new USB port server brings USB to existing serial devices.
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More products are available that plug into USB.
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CMD's PCI-to-USB CSA-6700 card lets new USB devices work with older PCs.
USB Products Arrive in Force
