[Wylug-discuss] [off-topic] Laptop that becomes a USB Drive

[peter nix]

The firewire equivalent functionality is standard on macs today, and
replaces an equivalent functionality available on them in the past via
the scsi bus:

"Make sure that your computer is shut down and the computer you are
connecting to is on. Connect your computer to another FireWire-equipped
computer. Start up your computer and immediately hold down the T key.
Your computer display shows the FireWire logo. Then your computer
internal hard disk icon  and the icon of a CD or DVD disc  appear on the
desktop of the other computer."

The point of this is to allow you to mount the discs of an un-bootable
machine on a bootable one - particularly useful when you have a portable
without any removable disc drives.

Inverting the arrangement, it's hard to see why  pocketable drives so
seldom come with a cpu/os for when there isn't a larger host about for
them to attach themselves to, or insert themselves in:

The linux iPod:
http://www.cs.duke.edu/~geha/ipod/

The Intel personal server
http://linuxdevices.com/articles/AT5772921353.html

Peter


James Holden wrote:

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> Daniel Walker wrote:
> | apologies for the off-topic post..
> |
> | I remember a while back I was pricing up laptops and I saw one that had
> | a USB-b socket on so that, if the machine was off, you could use a
> | standard USB cable and connect it to another machine, and the entire
> | hard drive showed up as a USB drive.
> |
> | Now I can't remember who made it. Does anyone else?
> |
> | Dan
>
> Are you sure it wasn't some kind of USB-USB networking thing? I heard of
> that once, so that you could link it to your desktop without messing
> around with bits of ethernet.
>
> The functionality access the hard disk with the machine switched off
> wasn't there though, if I remember correctly.
>
> That said, I can't remember where I saw that thing, either.
>
> James
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