Re: for the tinkerers / hackers (in the orig meaning of the word)

["mdj" <mdj.mdj@gmail.com>]

a2fan@hotmail.com wrote:

> I wish someone would give me a practical reason for USB on the Apple II
> ... everyone who wants it, wants to do something different with it.
> Printers, thumb drives, keyboards and mice - the hardware is the easy
> part, but the drivers and making everything compatible is where the
> problem is.

Storage.

USB has the advantage that you can use thumb drives, memory cards,
'real' hard disks or even optical drives as easily interchangable
storage formats on the Apple II

And perhaps the most compelling one for me is aesthetics. A USB port
can easily mount in the backplane of the IIe or IIgs. Plug in a USB key
or one of the 8-in-1 memory card readers and away you go.

And drivers for storage is actually very easy, since the smartport
protocol quite simple, and already 'just works'.

Of course, there's dozens of fringe cases - printers, input devices,
and so on. These are of course much trickier. For me, these offer no
practical value. But an implementation of USB solves both mass-storage
and data transportation to/from the Apple II universally, and for
decades to come.

Matt