Tech Talk (3/00)

Windows 2000 & USB

by Brian K. Lewis, Ph.D.*
Member of the Sarasota Personal Computer Users Group, Inc.

Did you rush right out and buy Windows 2000 when it first appeared in the stores last month? I certainly hope not, unless you were running Windows NT on your computer. Microsoft does not consider Windows 2000 to be the upgrade for anyone using Windows 9X. The next upgrade for Windows 9X is currently code-named "Millennium" and it won't be released for sale until the third quarter of this year. What its name will be by then, who knows?

Windows 2000 is currently being released in two versions: Professional and Server. However, the Server version comes in three sizes: Standard, Advanced and Datacenter. The pricing varies from $149 for an upgrade for a Windows NT workstation to $599 for a standard server upgrade with 10 client licenses. Of course, these also vary depending on where you buy them. But, if you want to upgrade Win9X to Win2K professional, the recommended upgrade price is $249! That is considerably higher than any previous Win9X upgrade price.

So, other than the stiff price what other objections might there be to upgrading your Win9x system. There are many pluses to the new operating system, but it is a much more complex system with many more options to be considered. In addition, it does not support all legacy hardware. This is especially true of non plug & play hardware. Most software will run, with the exception of anti-virus software and most maintenance utilities. However, if you have a Windows NT compatible version of your software, that should run with the Win2K Professional version. You will also need a minimum of 64MB of RAM. Actually, the test results I've seen indicate that it performs much better with 128MB of RAM. The system is so large that it takes up 650MB of hard disk space. Overall, my recommendation would be to wait for the consumer upgrade of Windows 98. If you are not convinced, check out PC Magazine's web site for more details (www.pcmag.com).

That's enough space for Win2K. Let's move on to something else, like USB (Universal Serial Ports). More and more hardware ads are touting peripherals with USB connectivity. So what are the advantages to using USB compared to parallel, serial or SCSI connections? A comparison of data transmission speeds is shown in the following table:

Serial Port	Parallel Port	USB (low-speed)	USB (high-speed)
230 Kbps	300 Kbps	1.5 Mbps	12 Mbps

The abbreviations Kpbs means thousand bits per second. You can see that USB, even in slow speed, is rated at more than a million bits per second. It is expected that USB will eventually replace all parallel and serial ports. Now SCSI is a different story.

SCSI can transfer data from 1-160Mbps, depending on the capability of the SCSI card. The high range being the Ultra SCSI-3 specification. So it is not likely that USB will replace SCSI or FireWire (IEEE 1394). The latter has ratings of 100, 200, and 400Mbps. The disadvantage with SCSI is that it is more difficult to setup than USB. Support for Firewire is included in Windows 98 SE. However, Firewire is predominately being used for digital video connections. That may change in the future.

There are other advantages to USB. Devices drawing less than 500 mA of power can draw power from the computer. They will not need a separate power source. This group includes such things as keyboards and mice. Speakers, scanners, printers and removable storage devices (ZIP drives) are examples of things that will need to have their own power source.

Additionally, there is one standard cable for any USB device. The cable is designed with a connector for the host (your computer) and a connector for the device (function) you are attaching. The cable has only four wires: two for data, one for power and one for ground. You can add up to 127 devices to a USB connection by using add-on hubs. This is the theory. In practice the most functions that have been added to one computer is 101. That's still better than we can do with other I/O ports.

One other advantage of USB is that it requires only a single interrupt (IRQ) and it can be shared. With the limited number of interrupts designed into PC's, this is a very desirable feature. Too many systems are "interrupt-shy" at the time they are delivered. This makes the adding of peripherals very difficult. As more USB devices become available, this problem should disappear.

The USB specification is designed to allow for "hot swapping" of peripherals and simple installation. The hot swap feature means that you don't need to turn your computer off to plug/unplug a USB device once the installation is complete. USB devices are also expected to be Plug & Play. The operating system should recognize them when they are plugged into the port. You should realize that the original version of Windows 95 does not support USB. Only Windows 95b, 95c, 98, 98 SE and 2000 have the necessary support for USB. In addition, the motherboard BIOS must support USB. You must also enable the USB chip in the BIOS. It should be noted that Windows 95b & c require the installation of a USB Supplement from Microsoft. Otherwise, the port will not be recognized by Windows. This supplement must be version 4.03.1214 or higher. The earlier versions did not work.

These software requirements have lead to some interesting problems. For example, connecting a Hewlett-Packard USB printer to a computer with an Intel 500 CPU should be no problem. The Intel chipset usually included on the motherboard should have built-in support for the USB ports. However, HP does indicate on its Website that some of its USB printers won't work with chipsets from VIA Technology. To solve this problem you have to download a patch from the VIA Tech Website. Not all of the HP support techs seem to be aware of this problem. In addition, one person in the last Tech Forum indicated that he was having problems connecting an HP scanner to an HP computer with USB ports. The support personnel seemed to think that the two were not compatible! The USB 1.1 specification of 12Mbps is supposed to be designed to work with devices such as scanners. In addition, the high-speed channel should be selected by the host when the device is connected. The source of this particular problem has yet to be resolved, but I suspect there is a software solution.

USB does have promise as a means of providing a standardized method for connecting peripherals. However, it is still in its "teething" stage. Even so, when shopping for scanners, joysticks, digital cameras, etc., be sure to consider those with USB connections.

*Dr. Lewis, a former university & medical school professor, is a computer consultant doing instruction, hardware/software services and system upgrades.

He is available to help you with your home or business computer problems. He does make house calls and can be reached via e-mail at bklew@worldnet.att.net or voice mail at 941/925-3047. :

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_______________________________________________________________ Copyright 2000. This article is from the March 2000 issue of the Sarasota PC Monitor, the official monthly publication of the Sarasota Personal Computer Users Group, Inc., P.O. Box 15889, Sarasota, FL 34277-1889. Permission to reprint is granted only to other non-profit computer user groups, provided proper credit is given to the author and our publication. We would appreciate receiving a copy of the publication the reprint appears in, please send to above address, Attn: Editor. For further information about our group, email: admin@spcug.org/ Web: http://www.spcug.org/

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