Does a DS20E AlphaServer support USB ports with Tru64?

[Geert Van Pamel]

I have a DS20E with Tru64 V5.1B. The Reference Guide (August 2000) tells me that the USB, Universal Serial Bus, is not supported.

Is this still the case?

[Ivan Ferreira]

Last time I checked USB support is for keyboard/mouse and modem.

[Steven Schweda]

I don't know much about USB on Tru64, but
recent versions of VMS support the NEC chip
(µPD720100AGM) which is used on a large
number of cheap Chinese PCI USB cards, and so
they will work in systems where the built-in
USB is not supported. If you have an empty
PCI slot, it costs only about $10 to run the
experiment.

I just tried a Macally "ikey"
(Macintosh-oriented) USB keyboard and a
Belkin F8E850ttOPT USB mouse on my XP1000
(with its cheap Chinese NEC-chip USB card),
and it seemed to work, which is certainly
suggestive.

If the system firmware does not recognize the
USB chip, I don't see how you could use only
a USB keyboard to talk to the SRM console.
(The XP1000 firmware is so old that it hasn't
a clue, but I used a PS2 keyboard to say
"boot dka100", and then I unplugged it. I
assume that a serial console would also
work until the X server got started.)

The Forum seems to be confused by a "mu", so
I'll add that the NEC chip is a '"mu"PD...',
but the chip's marking says just
"D720100AGM".

http://www.necel.com/usb/en/product/upd720100.html