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[News] USB card HIGHWAYANN.lu
Posted on 06-May-2002 18:42 GMT by kdh42 comments
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The USB card HIGHWAY will be general available by May, 31st 2002 and will be distributed by KDH Datentechnik. This is the first time that Amiga users can connect and use modern USB devices in connection with their classic Amigas. HIGHWAY is a Zorro II USB card and comes with an integrated 4-port-hub. The user has the possibility to connect up to four USB devices without the need for an additional hub. In addition, the HIGHWAY card can be expanded by the new 10Mbit ethernet modul NORWAY without wasting an additional Zorro slot. A compatibility list for Zorro-boards and Zorro-cards can be found here.

The boards have been developed and manufactured by E3B ( Michael Boehmer ). The worldwide distribution is done by KDH Datentechnik and your local Amiga dealer will have the cards in stock by end of May.

The scope of delivery includes the USB software stack Poseidon by Chris Hodges. Drivers for USB mice, keyboard and parallel interface ( printers ) and mass storage devices ( SCSI-emulation: e.g. flashcard-reader, ZIP-devices, digicams following the MSD-standard ) will be shipped in addition to the HIGHWAY card without any additional cost. More drivers ( webcam, digicam and printers ) are being developed right now by third party companies.

We do support the development of the Amiga OS4.0 contained USB-stack by providing the USB cards HIGHWAY and SUBWAY. Both cards serve as the reference-hardware for the software-development and will be directly supported by OS4.0. Alternatively it will be possible to use the provided Poseidon stack.
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Comment 1amigos06-May-2002 17:53 GMT
Comment 2Christophe Decanini06-May-2002 17:56 GMT
Comment 3José06-May-2002 18:00 GMT
Comment 4amigos06-May-2002 18:01 GMT
Comment 5José06-May-2002 18:03 GMT
Comment 6amigos06-May-2002 18:08 GMT
Comment 7Budda06-May-2002 18:22 GMT
Comment 8amigos06-May-2002 18:31 GMT
Comment 9Christophe Decanini06-May-2002 18:40 GMT
Comment 10amigos06-May-2002 18:47 GMT
Comment 11amigos06-May-2002 18:49 GMT
Comment 12Christophe Decanini06-May-2002 19:02 GMT
Comment 13kjetil06-May-2002 19:14 GMT
Comment 14kjetil06-May-2002 19:20 GMT
Comment 15Christophe Decanini06-May-2002 19:21 GMT
Comment 16kjetil06-May-2002 19:51 GMT
Comment 17Neil06-May-2002 19:52 GMT
Comment 18Chris Hodges06-May-2002 20:18 GMT
Comment 19Budda06-May-2002 20:22 GMT
Comment 20Janne Sirén06-May-2002 20:31 GMT
Comment 21Christophe Decanini06-May-2002 21:50 GMT
Comment 22sutro06-May-2002 22:28 GMT
Comment 23Anonymous06-May-2002 22:48 GMT
Comment 24Raffaele07-May-2002 00:34 GMT
Comment 25Chris Hodges07-May-2002 04:56 GMT
Comment 26EmGee07-May-2002 05:23 GMT
Comment 27Jürgen Schober07-May-2002 05:45 GMT
Comment 28priest07-May-2002 08:36 GMT
Comment 29José07-May-2002 09:11 GMT
Comment 30Andretti07-May-2002 12:19 GMT
Comment 31Ole-Egil Hvitmyren07-May-2002 12:29 GMT
Comment 32Jaeson Koszarsky07-May-2002 16:27 GMT
Comment 33Matthew07-May-2002 16:51 GMT
Comment 34Philippe07-May-2002 18:41 GMT
Comment 35Raffaele07-May-2002 18:45 GMT
Comment 36Cheney07-May-2002 19:00 GMT
Comment 37Cheney07-May-2002 19:10 GMT
Comment 38Michael Boehmer07-May-2002 20:54 GMT
Comment 39Lennart Fridén08-May-2002 07:15 GMT
Comment 40Jim Forbes-Ritte(Agafaster)08-May-2002 10:45 GMT
Comment 41Neil08-May-2002 11:31 GMT
USB card HIGHWAY : Comment 42 of 42ANN.lu
Posted by Chris Hodges on 08-May-2002 11:46 GMT
In reply to Comment 40 (Jim Forbes-Ritte(Agafaster)):
Unfortunately there is no real standard for serial RS232 communication replacement via USB
and most PDA syncing stuff via USB is in fact similar to the RS232 stuff, however, there is
no standard way of finding this out or assigning a class driver to something which just
registers on the USB with "vendor specific class and protocol".
However, I'm sure there will be solutions popping up after a short time. I'm also
thinking of adding a dummy device driver which just grabs the first bulk IN and OUT
endpoints and then creates an AmigaOS device (usbraw.device?) handling
CMD_READ/CMD_WRITE. This might be enough to get such devices working. But I cannot
definately say anything yet, as I just haven't had the time to look up very possible
USB device out there.
USB 2.0 theoretically has a raw bus bandwidth of 480MBit/sec, which in fact is much
lower as USB1.1 and USB2.0 devices share the same bus. In the very best theoretical
case with no latency for polling the packets, you can get about 50MB/sec over the bus.
One Low-Speed transfer (i.e a mouse packet), however, will take about 30% of the
bandwidth of a frame (1ms) away. It's always the same with Intel: they invent a cheap
bus capable for slow systems as a RS232 replacement, then they try to upgrade this
design that was intentionally not capable of higher speeds, by hacking/patching/
workarounds and expanding the USB1.1 documentation from 327 pages to 622 pages for
USB2.0 and think they've improved the bus to compete with FireWire.
FireWire was designed by the IEEE group (not by Intel) with high speeds in mind from
the beginning. For what I've know it is a clean and good design. Too bad the licence
fees are a bit higher than with USB :-\
Best regards
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