USB Slave and master

[Blu3Sab3r]

Is this set by the cable or is it set by the pins. Is there a way to change them? I want to hook up a portable hard-drive.

[Master Chief]

do you mean the data connection to the Ux then it is the cable the pins in the sled are for charging:confused:

[Unregistered]

from what I can see, the cable is universal and only can use one way. The larger side, which is connected to the PC, is the master. The smaller (connected to devices, eg UX, cameras, etc) is the slave. Having this in mind, the device part will always be a 'hard drive'.

Haven't seen devices reverse the process.
But in the first place, how are you able to connect your UX to a harddisk? Which cable are you gonna use?

[Blu3Sab3r]

The supplied cable yes, the Radio Shack cables, not. A mini jack from the portable hard-drive into a standard USB cable adapter. Plug the UX into the hard-drive with drivers, hot sync and data import/ Palm Desktop preinstalled in hard-drive.

[Blu3Sab3r]

Hows this?

http://www.radioshack.ca/estore/Product.aspx?language=en-CA&product=2613288&category=USB&catalog=RadioShack

[RandallFlagg]

USB devices are designated host/slave (or host/peripheral) by the chipset used and the type of connector, not the cable itself. Using a gender changer isn't going to affect whether or not a USB device can also act as a host. In fact, according to USB-IF (at www.usb.org), connecting two peripherals together (or two hosts together) via USB can possibly short out the connector.

There is a connector type called Mini-AB that can act as both a peripheral and a host, but I haven't looked into whether or not the Clie uses this connector type. I doubt it, but I suppose it's possible. And even if the connector supports USB host connections, the OS would have to support it as well.

Anyone know for sure? I don't see any Sony-sanctioned accessories for the UX50 that connect via USB. It sure would be interesting to connect USB peripherals to it.

[Blu3Sab3r]

It is not interesting, its godly. Think of all the things, a keyboard, a portable hard drive, a microphone, some USB speakers! BTW, find more about the mini-ab.

[JustaNoob]

Randall is right.

You can bet that if Sony had included USB host capability, they'd be splashing it all over.

Very few PDAs have had on-board USB host -- the NEC P300 is the only one I can think of off the top of my head, and despite every attempt, nobody that I know of ever came out with a driver for it (edit: except for keyboards).

There is a USB Host compact flash adapter that just came out, but of course that's of no use to UX owners.

[phoneboy101]

There's also the issue of power. The UX-50, as a USB slave, does not have the power supply requirements to be a master. The only possible way of connecting slave devices to the UX would be to build a powered custom box that acts as a master bus. You would plug the UX into that box, plus whatever else USB device you would want to use. You would then need software on the Clie, and in the box, that would know how to control everything, and let the Clie act as a false master, throug the box.

Sonnds pretty impossible to me, not being an expert in any of these areas.

[CliePet]

The feature you want is called "USB On The Go" (USB-OTG). It is not supported by the UX50, but it is supported on the NZ90 !

USB-OTG lets the PDA work as a slave (aka client) to connect to your PC for Hot-Sync, or as a master (aka host) to connect to a printer (or in theory a USB hard drive or mouse or keyboard)

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Related thread: http://www.cliesource.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=30960

For the NZ90, it has the *capability* of being both a USB client (AKA slave) and a USB host (AKA master). This mix is called "USB On-The-Go".

This is a very cool, but also underutilized feature of the NZ90.
The NZ90 lacks a general USB device driver to make this work.

The NZ90 USB hosting features are currently limited to connecting to a few USB printers.

So for NZ90 owners, the hardware is up to the challenge, the software drivers are the limitation.

[JustaNoob]

good info, cliepet!