I'm glad the MD <-> USB thread has proven to be a lively topic of discussion! You'll get no argument from me that USB is not technically the "best" interface. However, it might turn out to be the very popular for these reasons: 1) USB is available on the motherboard of almost every new computer these days and there are a wide variety of USB peripherals. It is multi-drop (unlike serial RS232) and *designed* from the start to be two-way (unlike the printer port). It is cheap (unlike SCSI). 2) There are many advantages over current methods of digital transfer (TOSlink/SPDIF/ControlA1). Although TOSlink/SPDIF can theoretically hand high speed transfer, there is no readily available hardware for faster than 96K (2x). TOSlink/SPDIF is uni-directional, so you need 2 cables to go both directions. TOSlink/SPDIF has no "flow control" or retransmission; one has to be careful of buffer overruns/underruns with Windows. TOSlink/SPDIF does not handle deck control; you must use a separate ControlA1 (or other more primative) interface. Beside handling all these functions in one cable, USB would also supply the modest power requirements of a portable MD recorder! So it would essentially replace 4 cables to the MD with one cable, certainly an important point when considering the compact size of a portable MD recorder. 3) It would be a simple, incremental improvement from the manufacturing point-of-view. This is important, because no manufacturer wants to incure the possibility of out-of-control costs associated with a more open-ended design project. Adding USB capability to a portable MD recorder would be a fairly "contained" design effort, constrained to the single chip that implemented the USB interface. No transport modifications would be required to implement high-speed transfer, since the MD transport in most machines can already run at 5X speed. I know USB is not the ultimate in terms of performance, but it could be the most cost-effective. Judging from what I've seen on MD-L, cost is a *big* incentive. ----------------------------------------------------------------- To stop getting this list send a message containing just the word "unsubscribe" to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
