Sophisticated Circuits' current products all use the Mac's ADB (Apple Desktop Bus) to connect to the Mac, and for communication between our hardware and our software. Apple is moving away from ADB in favor of the emerging standard USB (Universal Serial Bus). The blue & white G3 comes with both an ADB and USB ports, while the iMac and G4 models only have USB ports.USB development
We have been busy researching and developing products for use with USB. Our first USB device, Kick-off!, for automatically restarting crashed USB Macs, will use the same software as Rebound! 2.0, but connects to the USB port and uses power cycling to restart the crashed USB Mac. Kick-off! is scheduled to begin production as soon as all the safety and certification testing is complete; we expect Kick-off! to start shipping during the first quarter of 2000.
The development of Kick-off! will also apply to a forthcoming USB-compatible model of PowerKey Pro. We plan to begin work on this version soon after Kick-off! is released.
As soon as we have any new information or products to announce, we will post it to our web site. You can be notified directly, if you wish, by signing up for our mailing lists.
ADB to USB converters
Some third-party manufacturers make converters which connect to a USB port and allow you to connect ADB devices. These were primarily designed to convert input devices such as keyboards, mice and trackballs, but some offer support for other ADB devices as well, with the addition of special software.
We cannot confirm whether these converters will work completely with all our products. PowerPad works just like any ADB Mac keyboard and may work with an adapter. Certain features of our other products, such as Rebound!'s crash restarting, rely on features of ADB Macs which are not available on USB Macs. And in general, our products' high level of software to hardware integration may not be fully adaptable to the USB systems.
Information on available ADB to USB converters may be found at MacInTouch's iMac and new G3 peripherals guide.
Blue & white G3
The blue & white G3 includes a standard ADB port, which can be used to connect our products to this model of Macintosh.
Rebound!, Desktop Dialer and PowerPad will work just like they do on other ADB Macs. These products all include pass-through ports for other ADB devices; however, they operate independently and do not need an ADB keyboard connected to them.
With PowerKey and PowerKey Pro, there are two blue & white G3 compatibility issues. The first is reliability of scheduled startups. We have discovered in our testing that occasionally the blue & white G3 does not fully start up when PowerKey sends the ADB "Power On" signal. Instead, the computer's power light comes on, but the monitor stays blank, there are no start up chimes, and the system does not load. This occurs about once in every six to twenty startups.
When this happens, you can press the "reset" button on the front of the computer to start up the system. We do not why this happens, nor do we have a work-around or solution to this problem. We have also seen reports of similar start up problems with the blue & white G3 not involving our products.
The second issue concerns keyboard startup. PowerKey and PowerKey Pro rely on the "power-on" key on an ADB keyboard to turn on their outlets and start up the computer. If you are using an ADB keyboard, both PowerKey and PowerKey Pro will detect this keypress and turn on their outlets, plus forward the start up signal to the computer. But if you are using a USB keyboard, the PowerKey Pro can not detect this signal, and so its outlets will not turn on at startup; however, the "Classic" PowerKey will detect the startup and will turn on its outlets.
There are several possible workarounds for using PowerKey with a USB keyboard, depending on the model of PowerKey:
- PowerKey "Classic"
- Simply connect the PowerKey's ADB cable to the blue & white G3's ADB port and start up your system using the USB keyboard's Power On button. You may also use the PowerKey Editor to create a PowerKey scheduled startup event, which will automatically turn on your entire system at any time you choose.
- PowerKey Pro 600
- You can use PowerKey Pro 600's "power-on" key to start up the system. This button works exactly like the "power-on" key on the Mac's ADB keyboard, and will start up your entire system.
- PowerKey Pro 200
- You can turn on PowerKey Pro 200's outlets after startup by using a Hot Key or AppleScript. You can also put the AppleScript into your Startup Items folder to turn the outlets on automatically.
Hot Key events and AppleScripting are described in the user manuals, which are now available online in .pdf form, in our software library. There's also advanced scripting information in the Extras folder with the PowerKey software.
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