Sam440 and USB. Does it work?

[Amithony]

I have been hearing rumblings that the USB on the SAMiga board are a bit dodgy. This is a show stopper for me in deciding if to buy one. Has anyone had experience with it?

[xeron]

OS4.1 supports USB1.x on the SAM board. Development on the Sirion USB stack continues, and i'm sure support will expand in the future.

[bigmac]

Amithony wrote:
I have been hearing rumblings that the USB on the SAMiga board are a bit dodgy. This is a show stopper for me in deciding if to buy one. Has anyone had experience with it?

Hi! been using it with 3-4 different thunb drives a hp usb printer and a maxtor usb hard drive and hav,nt had any probs you should go for it you wont regret it.
cheers

[mihcael]

An open source poseidon driver would benifit all!!

poseidon port

[takemehomegrandma]

mihcael wrote:
An open source poseidon driver would benifit all!!

poseidon port

Poseidon rocks, there is *nothing* like it, it's *the Amiga USB standard*!  :-D

I have no experience from USB on OS4/Sam/A1, but from what I read the OS4 USB merely supports a fraction of Poseidon's supported devices, it only support USB 1 and is quite buggy at the moment, like not recognizing devices and/or dropping devices already connected and corrupting files.

I think OS4 would *really benefit* if they decided to go for Poseidon instead and drop what they have now. :-)

[xeron]

I have no experience from USB on OS4/Sam/A1

So you're basing your entire opinion on some threads where people had trouble. Of course, everyone who has had a great experience with Sirion probably didn't write about it all over the forums. Which is the problem with forming opinions about stuff you have no real idea about.

IMHO, Sirion is not perfect, but when you have supported devices, it works nicely and non-intrusively.

Sure Poseidon currently supports USB2 and some devices Sirion doesn't, but personally i don't think there is any great need for Poseidon on OS4. Sirion is improving all the time.

BTW, as an owner of an Algor, i can actually speak with experience about Poseidon. Poseidon is a great, well written, stable, quality product. But I don't miss it on OS4 at all.

Edit: BTW, the one time I did have corruption on a USB device it was due to a bug in an (OLD, and never publically released) version of CrossDOS, nothing at all to do with Sirion itself. I've never had any corruption with newer versions of CrossDOS, or when i made very heavy use of my external USB hard disk formatted with SFS.

[TiredOLife]

Have had no problems with corrupted files, dropped devices or not recognising devices.
It even recognises Ipod Nanos properly unlike the version of Poseidon I have.
That is only 3.8 though (I think) as support was stopped for Spider at that point.
I have no doubt Poseidon supports more though.
It does support floppy USB drives for instance.

The big difference is USB1 Versus USB2 I would say.
That is planned for Sirion I'm told.

[Andeda]

bigmac wrote:

Amithony wrote:
I have been hearing rumblings that the USB on the SAMiga board are a bit dodgy. This is a show stopper for me in deciding if to buy one. Has anyone had experience with it?

Hi! been using it with 3-4 different thunb drives a hp usb printer and a maxtor usb hard drive and hav,nt had any probs you should go for it you wont regret it.
cheers

My usb works great too, i have been using my Sam for over 1 month now without any problems.

[Hans_]

takemehomegrandma wrote:

I have no experience from USB on OS4/Sam/A1, but from what I read the OS4 USB merely supports a fraction of Poseidon's supported devices, it only support USB 1 and is quite buggy at the moment, like not recognizing devices and/or dropping devices already connected and corrupting files.

You going for overstatement of the year? Yes Poseidon has support for more devices, but the difference is not big enough to constitute "a fraction." Yes Sirion has no USB 2.0 drivers, but it is not "quite buggy." In fact, it's been really stable on my system. I have NOT had any issues with dropping devices or corrupted filed. All devices that I have ever plugged in are recognized, even if a driver is not available to use it. Moreover, Sirion is still actively being developed. The shortcomings will be solved.

To answer the original question, USB works on the SAM motherboard, but at USB 1.1 speeds only. USB 2.0 drivers are in the works, but you'll have to wait a bit. In the meantime, USB 1.1 is completely usable.

Hans

[Fab12]

Not everyone may encounter issues, yet there are some, it seems, the biggest ones being crashes and major leaks with massstorage class.

Some user report here

And just to be balanced (else i'd be probably considered as biased by some), there are also issues with Poseidon with some devices.

It's generally more helpful to know issues than ignoring them.

[xeron]

Of course some people have had issues with Sirion, USB is not a simple thing. People have also had issues with Poseidon.

I backed up over 35Gb of data over USB mass storage in OS4 beta many months ago, with a version of the Sirion USB stack older than that in the SAM OS4.1 beta. I had not a single issue with corruption or memory leaks.

BTW, about the memory leaks, i'd be interested to know how he measured it; the free memory figures in OS4.x can be misleading.

Edit: Having read that thread you linked to, it seems clear to me that the issue is to do with his card reader. The same user reports no problems with USB memory sticks.

USB stack never crashes for me, although i only use it with my phone and USB hard disk (no keyboard or mouse).

[takemehomegrandma]

xeron wrote:

So you're basing your entire opinion on some threads where people had trouble.

Indeed I do, and this is because there has been quite a few of them.

Anyway, my point is that when you put all things together, USB in OS4 is nowhere near Poseidon when it comes to Performance, Stability and amount of Supported Devices. With the current OS4 USB stack you can't do as much as you can with Poseidon, you can't do it as fast, and you can't do it as secure and stable. And instead of inventing the wheel again and spend the work and man hours to try to fix the issues and bring it up to Poseidon's level, it would be much better to simply put in the remaining $2045 and use those sources to warp OS4 to the USB standard the rest of the Amiga community enjoys. Everyone would benefit, including the Open Source part of the community. Would be a great thing! :-)

[xeron]

Performance, Stability and amount of Supported Devices.

Performance, you have a point, until the USB2 support for Sirion arrives.

Stability, well, its perfectly stable for me and for a lot of other people.

Supported Devices. Since you seem to know all about it, why don't you post the comprehensive list of supported devices for both stacks you obviously have to hand to speak with such authority on the subject.

you can't do it as secure and stable.

Sirion is perfectly stable for a lot of people. A few threads where some people had some problems doesn't mean that everyone has issues.

Interesting that the only person in this thread actively promoting Poseidon as a needed solution for OS4.x is someone who has no interest in OS4.x, clearly has disdain for OS4.x and always wades into OS4.x related threads to point out how clearly superior their other choice of OS is (often using poorly researched, outdated or just plain wrong statements to back it up).

[Ruud]

I have found the usb on the sam with os4.1 on the whole to be pretty good.  The worst thing is the lack of usb2 of course. Other than that the only problem I've had is sometimes I loose my saitek mouse. I'm going to try a different one, see if it ever happens with that one. It doesn't happen often enough to be a real pain.

On a related subject does anyone have experience of a card reader that works well under os4.1?  I use an 8gb Micro SD HC card in my phone I'd like to be able to access.

[xeron]

Which phone do you use?

I just connect my Sony phone direct to the AmigaOne to read the card. When it connects I select Mass Storage mode, and "PHONE:" and "PHONE CARD:" pop up on the workbench. Dunno if other phones are the same.