libusb 1.0 Windows Backend

Here is a new development on the libusb 1.0 for Windows front now that libusb 1.0 already works under Linux and Mac OS X. Now the libusb-winusb branch (using WinUSB backend, good for XP, Vista and Windows 7, 32bit or 64bit) reached beta status. This may be a good alternative to the libusb-win32 project.

The benefits of this WinUSB backend is that it will work for 64bit Windows like Vista and Windows 7. The WinUSB backend will not support isochronous transfer. So it is not a complement replacement of libusb-win32 yet.

libusb-winusb will be integrated to the main libusb-1.0 tree (using git). Once it is mature, I think it will be very good replacement for libusb-win32. More backend will probably be added, like the HID backend (HID support) and the libusb-win32 device driver backend (isochronous support, Windows 2k support). When that happens, it can replace libusb-win32 (0.1 stable branch and the 1.0 development branch).

More information about libusb 1.0 Windows backend:
http://libusb.org/wiki/windows_backend

More Wii Stuff

Over the Christmas and New Year holiday period, I bought quite some Wii related things.

Wii Fit Plus with the Wii balance board is one major item. At SGD159, it is quite a good investment. Now I use it everyday for 30minutes to burn some calories. Wii Sports Resort (table tennis is the most popular for us) and Wii Fit Plus are now the two most played games for us.

The Wii Classics Controller is also a good investment now that I bought quite some virtual console games (2 NES, 1 N64 , 1 Sega Master, 4 Sega Genesis because of the Sega promotion, used to be US$8, bought at US$5).

I also bought two more Wiiware titles (Excitebike and Onslaught). Both are quite good.

None of use are serious gamers but it seems Nintendo really develops a good platform even for non-gamers. One of my colleague (who enjoys PS3 very much, to me PS3 games are too complicated) just bought a Wii as well since it is very different from PS3 and the Sports related games for Wii are really good.

Quirky and dpup beta first impression

Quirky Linux (http://bkhome.org/blog/?viewCat=Quirky) and Debian Lenny based Puppy dpup (http://www.dpup.org) seem to be actively developed and based on the Puppy Linux philosophy. Both are based on Woof but are based on T2 and Debian Lenny respectively. There are other Woof Puppy based on Slackware and Ubuntu but none of them seems to be as mature as Quirky and dpup.

I tried Quirky 0.02 and now I am running Quirky 0.03. One of the issue is that the default selected Xorg nv driver is not working for my Nvidia 620i/Geforce 7050 integrated graphics and I have to use Xorg vesa driver. Moreover, I am not able to install the Nvidia proprietary driver as it complains that it is not able to load the kernel driver. But it is not too bad, I am still able to reach full resolution of 1280x1024 (16bpp now) on my LG L1750SQ LCD monitor whereas distros like Ubuntu can not reach this resolution without using the Nvidia proprietary driver. It is also quite fast. I feel it is faster than Puppy 4.3.1.

From what I see, dpup is less matured even though it is supposed to be one of the leading V5.x Puppy. I feel it is slower than Quirky.