Re: S-parameter test sets

Rich Grise wrote: 
On Tue, 28 Jun 2005 18:49:29 +1200, Terry Given wrote:

Joel Kolstad wrote:

"Terry Given" <my_name@xxxxxxxx> wrote in message


One detailed read of the protocol was enough to kill that idea. What a
dog! Trust computer scientists to pick the most complex method of doing
anything.


What didn't you like about it?  I've used USB before, and while it is somewhat
complex, if you're actually trying to achieve everything that USB does (power
control, plug and play, guaranteed delivery as well as bulk delivery, "dumb"
modes for initial boot of PCs with keyboards and mice as well as the standard
"smart" modes, multiple speeds, etc.), I think that much of the complexity is
needed.  (I'd say the one place they got carried away was with control
reads/writes... and once they let the "software guys" loose on defining stuff
like HID, but that's no an inherent problem with USB itself).


its been a while since I looked (despite desinging USB products quite recently, I never write software so dont care about the protocol), but it struck me as being overly complex. I should go read my USB 2.0 book again, and try and recall what else I thought was crap. IIRC I didnt like the hierarchical structure, but this was a decade ago. 


The Customer wants easy. The Customer wants simple. The Customer wants
plug-n-play. The Customer doesn't want to think. USB is a nightmare on
the inside, but there are dedicated pepole who put up with it, because
the Customer wants crap like my little USD139 camera that just plugs
into my USB port, and just shows up. I suddenly have another drive,
with a bunch of jpg files on it. And USB also supports my HP transparent
scanner - a stunningly good deal - USD79 bucks! For a SCANNER!

So, yeah, for us engineering-types, USB is an abortion looking for
a coat hanger, but for the End User, it's a dream come true. I can't
help but think of that roommate I had several years ago, who had a
Macintosh. It used some kind of serial daisy-chainable interface, where you'd just plug your peripherals into each other. One socket
on the back of the computer itself, and one little cable that went to the keyboard, and then another little cable from the keyboard to
the printer, and another little cable from the printer to the ...

Well, you get the point.

At some point or another in the loop, somebody had to do the grunt
work.

Thanks,
Rich


Hi Rich,

you are dead right. I hooked up my digital camera to my pc for the first time the other day. I plugged it in and it played. And yep, scanners sure are cheap nowadays.

and the corollary is that when you have control over the hardware that gets plugged into the interface, things can get a lot simpler. At the time I was looking for a *cheap* hardware solution that did its own buffering and error checking, so as not to burden the poor old system processor, which was being beaten to death numerically.

Cheers
Terry
.