Re: USB scanners?

David Huggins-Daines (bn711@freenet.carleton.ca)
Thu, 3 Dec 1998 22:26:51 -0500

On Wed, Dec 02, 1998 at 03:16:49AM -0500, Matto Marjanovic wrote:
> This might be feasible soon with parallel ports, at least under Linux.
> Anyone know what the "parport" driver in the newer kernels does?

Unfortunately, drivers for specific devices will probably still need to
run in kernel-space.

> I'm not sure how to "focus on USB" if I have no USB equipment.
> What is the state of general USB support in various OS's? As soon as

NetBSD has it. Noone else does. For once, BSD beats Linux in hardware
support. Weird... :-)

People tell me that USB is somewhat like a cross between SCSI and
Ethernet - devices and host adaptors are adressable nodes on a bus,
and can send messages and data to each other using a defined protocol.

Right away, that sounds *way* better than parallel or serial ports.

> and, here's the rant:

(this is exactly what I said in a presentation to the local LUG the other
night :)

> The parallel port is still relatively useless, though, because:
> a) a low-overhead system API is pretty scarce, if it exists at all
> b) what else has a parallel-port besides a PC? you can find SCSI
> and serial ports on Sparc's, PowerPC's, SGI's, etc...

Alphas and Amigas... not much else. (Some PowerPCs, too, such as the
BeBox and PPeP/PReP/CHRP boxen)

-- 
perl -Mstrict -l0we'print&{sub{my(@q)=@_;&{sub{my($q)=@_;&$q($q,@q)}}(sub{my
($p,$q,@q,$r)=@_;$q&&(($q,$r)=@$q)&&qq@$\$q: ${\(ref$r?$/.eval q:local$\.=qq
; ;;&$p($p,\@$r)::$r)}$/@.(&$p($p,@q)||q$$);});}}([name=>"David Huggins-Dain".
q[es]],[work=>[[school=>"linguist"],[elsewhere=>"Linux hacker (for hire)"]]])'

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