USB Power (was Odd Floppy Drives)

[Chuck Guzis]

On 9/26/2005 at 6:48 PM Fred Cisin wrote:

>I've seen an LED map light that plugs into and gets its power
>from USB.  It seemed to work OK.

USB is downright handy for stealing power--and easier than stealing it from the keyboard port.  I run a script on the server here that has the audio card hooked to a cheap FM transmitter.  The transmitter took 3 AA cells, but grabbing +5 from a spare USB port works just fine.  106.7 on any radio in the house gets BBC World Service in the morning, BBC Radio 3 in the afternoon and BBC 7 in the evening.  Much better than the commercial-laden garbage that passes for commercial radio here.  Broadband has to be good for something, even when you're not sitting in front of the screen.

I discovered a carton of Toshiba InTouch modules in the garage--these are USB devices that are basically an LCD display with a bunch of buttons, a volume control and an IR sensor on two boards in a plastic case that was supposed to fit under the monitor of the Infinia.  I don't have Windows drivers for the things, so they're pretty useless as-is, but they've got a nice Toshiba 5343DGYTN  LCD display board in them.  I have the pinout of the display board and how to drive it from a PC parallel port (the controller is an OKI M5260).  The USB part of the board is all SMT with an Intel USB controller (basically an 8051 with USB support on it); code seems to be in a 27C256  OTP PROM...shrug.  All in original shrink-wrap boxes.  If anyone wants one, I'll let them go for my cost--$5 each + whatever it costs to mail.  The flotsam keeps washing up on the beach and I'm just trying to keep it out of the landfill or from poisoning some Chinese peasant.

Cheers,
Chuck