USB Design by Example: A Practical Guide to Building I/O Devices (2nd Edition) [Paperback]

John Hyde (Author)

Book Description

Series: Engineer-to-Engineer | Publication Date: February 2001

This unique guide goes beyond all the Universal Serial Bus (USB) specification overviews to provide you with the expert knowledge and skills you need to design and implement USB I/O devices. It is organized around a series of fully documented, real-world examples, and is structured to serve as both a step-by-step guide for creating specific devices and a complete reference to USB. Design examples cover most USB classes (HID, communications, audio, mass-storage and hub) and provide insights into high-speed USB 2.0 devices, including a device driver for a vendor class called blockio. Intel insider John Hyde: Provides examples, complete with schematics and source code, that gradually increase in complexity Describes many vendor solutions and shows how to pick the ones best suited to your project needs Explains how to design a vast array of devices, including data acquisition, audio, video and computer-telephony examples The CD-ROM contains: Source code and project files for all the examples in the book (PC Host and I/O device) Evaluation versions of design and debug tools The USB specification and supporting class and test documents Categorized links to other USB solution suppliers

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

The Universal Serial Bus (USB) specification is a boon for users in that it makes the process of connecting peripherals to computers effortless, in most cases. As is often the case with user-friendliness, though, the cosmetic ease comes about as a result of behind-the-scenes complexity. USB Design by Example explains what USB means to hardware developers, taking an approach that combines academic elucidation of the official specification with some experimental setups. Though not everything a hardware developer could wish for, John Hyde's explanations represent a valuable supplement to the notably obtuse specification documents.

This book does a good job of explaining USB input/output from both the hardware and software perspectives. You'll find both driver code and pinout diagrams here. All the software information has to do with the IBM-compatible PC platform and the Windows 98 operating system, so Macintosh developers will have to look elsewhere. Some of Hyde's explanations of how various hardware companies solved USB problems--Symbol Technologies' use of a keyboard emulator for its barcode scanners, for example--are intriguing, but more information (in the form of circuit diagrams, preferably) would be better. The clear explanation of what happens when a new device is plugged into a live USB bus is very intriguing, though. Overall, peripheral developers will find this book useful, but not encyclopedic. --David Wall

Topics covered: Universal Serial Bus (USB) architecture, packet contents, device detection, drivers and run-time software, and bridging older connection specifications (RS-232, parallel, SCSI and I2C) to USB. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

About the Author

John Hyde is a twenty-three year veteran of Intel, where he has held multiple technical marketing and evangelist roles, and is responsible for creating and delivering technical training materials.

Product Details

• Paperback: 510 pages
• Publisher: Intel Press; 2nd edition (February 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0970284659
• ISBN-13: 978-0970284655
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 7.6 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (18 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #493,238 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

43 of 44 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Disappointing, July 30, 2002

By 

Tom L. Davis (Carrollton, TX USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: USB Design by Example: A Practical Guide to Building I/O Devices (Paperback)

Short review: this book [stinks].

On the surface, this book looks like it is fairly good although it includes a lot of Intel PR about what a good thing USB is. Digging deeper, you will find serious errors, omissions, and examples of poor programming. Files mentioned in the book as being on the CD aren't. Could not find errata at the Intel Press web site. Assembly code just includes all source files in the project. I still haven't figured out how to debug a project like this. Any normal person would set the project up to assemble each file separately. All but one (firmware) project are written in assembly and the one C example doesn't work. The list could go on ...

Before I bought the book, I read these reviews and, generally, they were favorable. Now, I'm simply amazed that anyone would give it any more than 2 stars.

BTW, I think the book and CD are on-line at the Intel Press web site. At a price of $0.00, I'll give it 2 stars.

32 of 33 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars CD examples are broken, September 29, 2003

By 

"ben32694" (UK) - See all my reviews

This review is from: USB Design by Example: A Practical Guide to Building I/O Devices (Paperback)

Bought this book for one of the examples which seemed to be exactly what we needed - the Two Keyboards example. We had a great deal of trouble getting it to work, and we contacted the author directly. He was initially keen to help, telling us he was aware that the CD was generally messed up and versions of files were wrong. He pointed us at an updated online version. We tried this and had even worse problems getting it to build, let alone install. We contacted the author again, and he admitted the online versions were broken too, but he wasn't prepared to help us any further. The least you would ask is that the examples work fairly well and have installation advice either on the CD or in the book. I concur with another reviewer who said that the CD seems to be a mess and full of useless product information. It is hard to see a target audience for whom this book would be useful.

We made this purchase in spite of the poor reviews here, however we implore you to avoid this book: it is unlikely to fulfill your requirements and John Hyde does not deserve your money. It is clearly intended as a money-spinner rather than a useful reference.

23 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Good Overview for Managers - Poor Programming Detail, April 11, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: USB Design by Example: A Practical Guide to Building I/O Devices (Paperback)

This book starts out with a very good overview of the USB system. It then does a reasonable job giving one introductory programming example using the Anchor Chips EZ-USB chip. The rest of the book, however, seems to be a management level overview of all the things USB could/would do. But these are all high level examples with mostly pictures and block diagrams, and have little to no techincal details. Some of these refer to source code on the CD, at best, but there is no desciption of how to actually interface to any of the complicated devices. A detailed example of each of the USB communication methods (simple I/O, bulk port, isochronous port, ...) would have been better. It also needed better descriptions of all intervening OS software that is "magically" used to avoid writing new device drivers. Overall, it is a good overview for anyone that is new to USB, and has lots of high level ideas for a manager designing a new USB product, but very little detail for the software developer trying to develop a USB product.