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> > How does the bridge decide if it should pass on 5 bytes or 6 bytes? > it parses the command and sees that 5 bytes were I am talking about fixing this without parsing the command, same as a Usb1/AtapiPio4 bridge. If we can fix this without parsing the command, then we can build a fully transparent bridge. If we can build a fully transparent bridge, then we can use it over and over and over ... for less and less and less dollars. But I'm not only relating years of pain. I'm relating years of joy. I last thought deeply about the Usb/Ide bridging problem in 1998. The first Usb1/Pio4 bridge that handled that problem precisely as the team then recommended shipped in middle 1999. Thru the end of 1999, thru 2000, thru 2001, time and again people have come to tell us the bridge is broken because one thing or another doesn't work. Ordinarily, culturally here, the respect due to one engineer from another requires that we assume any observed trouble is our problem until we prove different. With this bridge, life is different With this bridge, we don't even have to look. At least in the area of transparently bridging command & data transfer, that bridge is not broken. Because it is FULLY transparent, any problem its remote attachment exhibits you can reproduce more or less trivially with a direct attachment. NO trouble over byte count/ direction has been shown to occur only with that bridge. This won't sound like a big deal to you if you lack my years of pain of seeing trouble over byte count/ direction. But if you can take my years of pain on faith, then you can appreciate how intensely I experience this relief. All our troubles like this exist only on parallel Scsi, parallel printer port, Atapi, 1394, ... zero, repeat zero, on Usb. This is the kind of perfect experience I want again, but this time with a Usb2/AtapiUDma bridge. Pat LaVarre P.S. I hear Iomega's in-house parallel/Scsi bridge was equally transparent. Broken on parallel port meant broken on Scsi, else host problem, end of story. Subscribe/Unsubscribe instructions can be found at www.t13.org.
