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Subject: RE: USB port on Cougar - can I get a Hail-Yeah?
Date: Thu, 30 Nov 2006 10:33:23 -0800
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Thread-Topic: USB port on Cougar - can I get a Hail-Yeah?
thread-index: AccUNQqNfgMV1E6SR7GwE+ELPqLw+wAbUWIQAAGifeA=
From: "Brian Stark" <brian.stark@onstor.com>
To: "Jay Michlin" <jay.michlin@onstor.com>,
	"Andy Sharp" <andy.sharp@onstor.com>
Cc: "Tim Gardner" <tim.gardner@onstor.com>

We've looked at USB, primarly because it's so pervasive.  The problem is
that to get native USB support, we have to put a fairly large chip down
that gives us a bunch of other stuff that we don't need.  This then
brings up the ever present issue of board space.  We also weren't sure
how to make USB mechanically feasible in the field since hanging things
off of the box via a USB cable or with a USB flash was deemed
undesireable by marketing.  If the USB drive or device was embedded
inside the chassis, that's another story.  We thought this may be useful
for development, but it wasn't something we wanted customers monkeying
with.

Anyway, I'll keep USB in mind since it happens that the HT-2000 has a
companion chip called the HT-1000 that provides USB (along with a bunch
of other stuff as mentioned above).  As we talked about the other night,
it basically comes down to board space.


Brian
=20

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Jay Michlin=20
> Sent: Thursday, November 30, 2006 9:20 AM
> To: Andy Sharp; Brian Stark
> Cc: Tim Gardner
> Subject: RE: USB port on Cougar - can I get a Hail-Yeah?
>=20
> Andy,
>=20
> I don't know whether this will be hard or not, but it sounds=20
> like a great idea to me if Brian can make it come true. USB=20
> is a hugely powerful interface, and we can do all sorts of=20
> creative things with it.
>=20
> jay=20
>=20
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Andrew Sharp [mailto:andy.sharp@onstor.com]
> Sent: Wednesday, November 29, 2006 8:07 PM
> To: Brian Stark
> Cc: Tim Gardner; Jay Michlin
> Subject: USB port on Cougar - can I get a Hail-Yeah?
>=20
> Hi Brian,
>=20
> So here I go asking (I'm still inside my honeymoon period)=20
> for a USB port. Does the south bridge (waaay south?) chip=20
> support USB?  Or perhaps there is a bit of space on one=20
> corner of the board where a USB host adapter can be put on the PCIe.
>=20
> One really excellent use for a USB port is utilizing=20
> transportable storage for baseline copy of mirrors.  Export=20
> the volume onto a 750GB external USB drive, hand it to FedEx,=20
> and import it on the other end, shazaam. Much easier than=20
> doing the similar thing with an array.  Of course if it's a=20
> 20TB dataset you'd have to do that 26 times ....
>=20
> I don't recall mention of a USB port in the docs so far.  Dev=20
> could make excellent use of such a beast as well for many=20
> things.  Rescue boot from an iPod?
>=20
> Cheers,
>=20
> a
>=20
