Connections and Cases

By Jerry Pournelle

April 29, 2002

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Column 259 (Continued from the Previous Week)

Backpack CD Rewriter

I have a new Micro-Solutions Backpack external CD-ROM burner, called the Backpack CD Rewriter, which runs at 32x. As always, it works just fine, right out of the box: I have got such great expectations of Backpack equipment that I have been known to take a new unit, still shrink-wrapped, down to the beach house fully expecting it to work, and it always does. Hardware, software, installation instructions: There's just not much to improve here. If you want reliable external CD Read/Write and Rewrite, you can depend on the Backpack products every time.

Highly recommended.

USB 2

The new Backpack will work with a Parallel, USB 1.1, or USB 2 connection, and once your system is set up that's all automatic. The interesting connection is USB 2, which is 40 times faster than USB 1.1 (480 Mbits/second), and will, in my judgment, slowly replace Apple's FireWire (aka IEEE 1394) as the serial connection to external devices such as camcorders as well as external disk drives.

New motherboards are coming out with USB 2 connections built on. These will be backward compatible with USB; you can use both simultaneously. You can convert your present system to USB 2 with a PCI bus card, or with a PCMCIA card. I have both from Orange Micro and they just work. Install the software, then the hardware. Windows detects the new hardware, and since you have already installed the drivers everything goes automagically. The PCI card has four external and one internal USB ports; the PCMCIA card has four external ports and comes with a small line lump power supply.

I've already replaced my travel pack USB card with the Orange Micro USB 2 system. I also found a short 3-wire power extension cord with three power outlets. The USB brick goes into one, the power connection for my laptop into the second, and I have a third for use with either the Olympus camera battery charger or the charger for my cell phone.

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