Once upon a time, I loved SCSI. (Was: Help! Is this kernel or hardwareproblem?)

[Ben Scott]

On 11/28/05, John Abreau <jabr at blu.org> wrote:
>>   I remember one of the neat features being the ability to shut down the
>> Powerbook and use the internal hard disk as an external disk for another
>> host.
>
> That still works. ... a key combination to hold down while booting
> that brought the machine up as a firewire hard drive, and I was able
> to install from another Mac onto this machine's drive to do the upgrade.

  Now that's just too cool.

  Apple always did (and continues to) have such nice designs.  It's a
pity they're so darn proprietary.

> I imagine it probably works equally well with USB2.

  Actually, I imagine it wouldn't.  Firewire uses a peer-to-peer
design, while USB is a master/slave paradigm.  USB hardware is
designed around that concept, from the signalling protocols to the
host controllers to the cables.   For example, you can use Firewire as
a simple LAN, by just plugging two Firewire hosts together with a
standard Firewire cable.  With USB, you need some kind of intelligent
USB multi-port slave device to act as an intermediary.

  A new revision of the USB spec introduces something called
"USB-To-Go", which allows for two devices to negotiate the
master/slave relationship.  It's mainly intended for things like
cameras and cell phones, which are usually slaves to a PC, but people
occasionally want to connect to each other.  So I don't know if we can
ever expect to see simple PC-to-PC USB links.

  Again, Apple was their own worst enemy.  If they hadn't been so
proprietary about Firewire, there's a good chance USB would never have
gained traction, and we wouldn't have to worry about fixing all the
brain damage in USB.

  *sigh*

-- Ben