Hi,

Well, I've gathered some bits that should enable me to add a USB host port to
the Einsten.

The chips and firmware I'm using have built in support for the FAT 12, 16 and 32
file systems (with the standard 8.3 naming convention) and should be able to
support a limited number of printers too.

The CompactFlash project gave me a good insight into the hardware side of things
but the problem was always going to be that supporting IDE interfaces was
looking more like a dead end as IDE drives are being phased out in favour of
SATA, and adding onboard support for FAT file systems just for IDE looked like a
lot of effort for a small amount of supported hardware. USB seems far more
logical as, once implimented, it will support any USB Mass Storage device. Most
digital cameras currently use the same storage system so it should be with us
for a while.

USB Flash Drives and Hard drives will all be accessable the same way, regardless
of how they are actually built.

There's also the possibility of adding a number of USB HIDs (Human Interface
Devices) such as keyboards, touchpads and mice. I'm also looking into making a
network adaptor to get all these Einsteins online, firstly for email, then for
an Einstein BB style internet service, but that's some way off yet.

I'll keep you all updated but posting this here will help me get my act
together.

Regards,
Geoff