WHITE PAPER (cont’d) Compaq Workstations - Key Technologies
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The software driver for the PremierSound audio solution is part of the standard workstation
software platform that is used for all Compaq Professional Workstations.
UNIVERSAL SERIAL BUS (USB)
The Compaq Professional Workstation 6000 includes two Universal Serial Bus (USB) ports.
USB is a peripheral bus standard developed by a group of PC and telecom industry leaders
including Compaq, DEC, IBM, Intel, Microsoft, NEC and NORTEL. USB enables hot plug and
play of computer peripherals outside of the workstation eliminating the need to install cards into
expansion slots and then having to reconfigure the system. Workstations equipped with USB
will allow peripheral devices to be automatically configured as soon as they are physically
attached - without the need to reboot or run setup. USB also allows up to 127 devices to run
simultaneously with peripherals such as monitors and keyboards acting as additional plug-in
sites, or hubs.
USB peripherals will include telephones, modems, keyboards, mice, CD-ROM drives, joysticks,
tape and floppy drives, scanners, and printers. USB has a 12 Mbits/sec data rate, compared to
115.2Kbits/sec for serial ports and 2Mbits/sec for enhanced parallel ports. This improved
transfer rate will accommodate a new generation of peripherals, including MPEG-2 (compressed
data) video based products and digitizers.
Drawing its intelligence from the host workstation, USB will detect when devices are added and
removed. USB automatically determines what host resource each peripheral need, including
driver software and bus bandwidth, and makes those resources available without user
intervention.
Currently, there are different ways to implement USB. The Compaq Professional Workstation
6000 implements the OpenHCI USB interface. OpenHCI reduces CPU overhead for USB devices
compared to other implementations and is fully compatible with UniversalHCI.
Currently, Microsoft Windows NT Workstation 4.0 does not support USB, but future versions
are expected to include USB drivers that will allow the workstation to recognize USB
peripherals.
Please refer to the Universal Serial Bus whitepaper for additional information on this topic.
CHASSIS AND SERVICEABILITY FEATURES
The chassis for Compaq Professional Workstation 6000 has been designed to optimize both
expandability and serviceability. Both systems come standard in a 10 bay minitower form
factor. The main features of this workstation chassis are:
• 10 bays (7 available; 1/3 height bay occupied by 3.5” floppy drive, ½ height bay occupied by
CD-ROM and one 1” hard drive cage bay occupied by 2GB or 4GB hard drive), 2-5.25” and
5-3.5” available
• Hard drive cage supporting up to 6- 1” hard drives or 4- 1.6” hard drives
• Locking removable media door and front bezel to inhibit unauthorized access to drive bays
• Volume, Microphone and Headphone jacks located on the front of the chassis
• Easy access (tool-less) to internal components through small access panel on the top or large
access panel on the side of the workstation
• Quick access to all system components through modular design and simple levers to remove
the entire processor cage or I/O cage.
• Tool-less access to I/O slots for easy addition of PCI and ISA cards.
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