Re: SCSI or USB

From: Jonathan Buzzard (jonathan@buzzard.org.uk)
Date: Wed Mar 15 2000 - 14:14:06 PST

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    khk@khk.net said:
    > Let me guess, you don't have too much contact with marketing people
    > :-) I'm pretty sure this is a number they made up for their business
    > plan just to get the project approved. I am not holding my breath and
    > continue to work on the USB side of my backend code.

    I do, but my guess is that these figures are in fact plausible.

    If I come to design a USB scanner, and find that I can buy an off the
    self chip with the addition of a few external components and the mechanics
    will let me have a scanner, what am I going to use? Given the volumes
    that Nat-Semi are likely to be able to achieve, they are also likely to
    be a cheaper option. My understanding is that they are also offering support
    to manufactures on device drivers etc.

    Basically the low end flat bed scanner market is now a commodity market.
    Someone (Nat-Semi) has decided that they can offer a generic ASIC for
    controlling scanners and interfacing to a USB bus. I am quite sure they
    would not be doing this if they where not confident of capturing a
    sizeable chunk of the market.

    Admittedly some big players such as UMAX, Epson, Canon and HP who have the
    resources for doing their own ASIC design will likely continue to do so.
    That said the HP-4200C does in fact use the Nat-Semi chip!

    JAB.

    -- 
    Jonathan A. Buzzard                 Email: jonathan@buzzard.org.uk
    Northumberland, United Kingdom.       Tel: +44(0)1661-832195
    

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