USB 2 card vendors provide their own drivers for OS X; it's not provided by Apple, per se. Some vendors may only support 10.2, but at least one, Iogear, supports 10.1 with a separate driver.
Vendors claim they can offer OS X drivers because the I/O driver model Apple uses makes doing so a trivial matter. (They can extend or create a subclass of an existing I/O framework.) They claim they "can't" do so for OS 8/9 because Apple provides no such object-oriented driver tools for OS 9 developers. It's really just a matter of cost, of course. If it's possible for Apple to write a given I/O driver, it's possible for others to do so, as well. They just don't believe sales projections justify the investment for an individual manufacturer -- and they're probably right. The only likely scenario for USB 2 support in OS 8/9 is for a third party to write a universal driver that would support all cards that comply with industry standards. Even then, the ROI equation for the shareware developer is not very tempting. On Friday, January 31, 2003, at 06:11 AM, Bruce Johnson wrote: > Yes, I've seen this before. I can find no mention of USB 2.0 in > Apple's Support site, Apple's Developer site, or Mac help on my system. > And actually, they may be correct in stating that USB 2 can only work > in Mac OSX or greater (while looking I came across an old Mac Central > article talking to someone from Orange Micro, iirc, saying they could > write a sdriver for OSX for their USB 2.0 card, but they'd need Apple > to do something to enable it in OS 9) but that doesn't mean that OSX > 10.2 includes USB 2.0 drivers. -- PCI-PowerMacs is sponsored by <http://lowendmac.com/> and... Small Dog Electronics http://www.smalldog.com | Refurbished Drives | -- Sonnet & PowerLogix Upgrades - start at $169 | & CDRWs on Sale! | Support Low End Mac <http://lowendmac.com/lists/support.html> PCI-PowerMacs list info: <http://lowendmac.com/lists/pci-powermacs.shtml> --> AOL users, remove "mailto:"; Send list messages to: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To unsubscribe, email: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> For digest mode, email: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subscription questions: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Archive:<http://www.mail-archive.com/pci-powermacs%40mail.maclaunch.com/> Using a Mac? Free email & more at Applelinks! http://www.applelinks.com
