We all know how fractured the hardware market is: You bought a computer at the local retailer that had "more expansion bays than anyone could ever use" (or so the plastic grin at the counter said.) But,when you got home, you started moving your old case mounted peripherals into the bays, only to discover that four empty bays isn’t nearly as many as you thought when you add up a 31/2 disk drive, CD-ROM drive, tape backup, and portable archive (like a ZIP drive). Now you’re full. What happens when you want to add the newest case mounted peripheral? Toss the oldest peripheral overboard and use the space, or swap out the devices based on your day by day needs and not bother with keeping the case on your computer? Both of these options are work arounds for a chronic shortage of drive bays, or worse, for power to plug them into. The average internal power supply has only four power cables for peripherals. So, again, you’re stuck leaving the case off to quickly replace the peripheral with the one you need.

Thank God, indeed, for the computing industry is finally arriving at a standard similar to the one the automotive tooling industry figured out 40 years ago. It is called Device Bay, and you’ll see it beginning to appear on computers made during this year.

Device Bay is not an entirely new idea, it’s just one that took forever to get industry backing. Laptops have, for at least three years, offered a space saving feature that let you use the same port and interface for both the CD-ROM drive and the disk drive. With Windows 95, the Operating System even kept tabs on when you changed from one to the other, but required you to do a reboot to make it work cleanly. The proprietary nature of laptops sunk any chance of this technology being developed into a standard, as sharing innovation is not something the corporate mentality can easily bring itself to do. But Device Bay is a different story.

So, to the particulars:

Device Bay is a specifications standard co-developed by Compaq, Intel and Microsoft that represents an open specification that will significantly improve the way PC customers install, upgrade, and use PCs and PC devices.

Device Bay was originally developed in response to the consumer desire to easily upgrade and customize their PCs. With Device Bay, upgrading a computer is as easy as inserting a tape into a VCR. No unscrewing, restarting, or rebooting needs to occur.

Although initially developed for the consumer, an advantage for corporate users has appeared as a happy by product: Device Bay allows a work station with a failed drive to be functional again in minutes instead of hours. At my august employer, Boeing, the process of replacing any "inside the box" component is farmed out to an outside vendor. When the busted hardware (usually a hard drive) has been replaced, a Boeing computing technician must reload all of the software. Even with software installation via the network, this fairly simple process could take a day or two. In the meantime, the company is paying an employee to hang out at the water cooler. Not good.

With a device bay capable computer, a Boeing technician could replace the drive themselves, and not have to worry about a software reload, because the standard Operating System image, and all of the applications could could be pre-loaded on the drive. The work station user is back up and running in the time it takes a technician to swap out the drive. With Device Bay, that time could be less that a single minute.

Also, the systems that previously required a CD-ROM drive for software installation now only require an empty Device Bay slot. When the CD-ROM drive is needed, it can be quickly inserted, used, and removed again. The reduced cost for service could significantly decrease the total cost of ownership and lower the need to "farm out" hardware repairs.

Device Bay uses the existing, complementary industry interfaces of Universal Serial Bus (USB) and IEEE 1394 High Performance Serial Bus (referred to as FireWire.) All peripherals in use today can be designed to utilize one of these interfaces, with three exceptions. Because of bus bandwidth limitations, RAM memory, CPUs, and video cards must still be attached directly to the motherboard.

Naturally, some proponents and manufacturers of hardware that conform to present standards are going to balk. The SCSI (Small Computer System Interface) standard is the industry norm for high bandwidth applications, and SCSI device are numerous. FireWire, the IEEE 1394 spec. discussed in the Dec ’96 and Sept. ’97 issues of PAUG will be for high bandwidth applications, such as drives or peripherals that would, today, turn to SCSI for their needs. Since SCSI has almost 20 years under its belt as a specification, don’t expect major SCSI manufacturers like Adaptec to enjoy the change.

Some of the other handy features of Device Bay include:

Automatic Configuration
The end user can immediately start using a newly inserted device. This is accomplished by a Plug and Play-capable operating system (like Windows 95). Previous PnP experiences have left a lot to be desired, largely because they were trying to work through a PCI architecture that wasn’t designed with PnP in mind, and because third-party software vendors wouldn’t comply with Microsoft’s published spec. for PnP.

Device Bay isn’t just for PCs.
Interoperability between platforms (say Mac and PC, or PC and UNIX) that provide device bay support again cuts down the cost of hardware purchases. What happens when someone needs the ZIP drive to take their drawing across town? Don’t heckle the guy with the drive permanently installed on his UNIX work station to make the ZIP copy for your: borrow the drive, insert it in your PC, make the copy, give the drive back.

Device Bay can be Secure
I’m sure some of you immediately thought of the security risk that sharing peripherals represents. If any fat-head can just pop out your Device Bay peripheral at the touch of the "Eject" button on your computer, a lot of expensive hardware is going to be going home in someone’s lunch box. Not to worry: Device Bay has a software-controlled physical interlock that can hold the device in the bay. No more "walking" hardware.

No Surprise Removal
Nothing makes you feel quite so stupid as disconnecting an external device when your system was actually using it. The possibility of a bump from your knee accidentally ejecting you "in use" hard drive is guarded against by Device Bay by monitoring system activity so you don’t pull the plug on a piece you forgot you are using.

Device Bay isn’t just for Computers
A wide variety of peripherals can be Device Bay devices. CE (Consumer-Electronics) devices can be Device Bay devices, thereby expanding the usefulness of a PC and the markets that manufacturers can appeal to. Some of these CE devices include Readable and writeable CD and DVD drives, Smart card readers, Satellite television decoders, high-speed digital modems and network cards, hard drives, or high-capacity removable media drives. How about borrowing your friend’s satellite decoder for the weekend? Pop it in, and your system runs it. Ultimately, this will blur the lines between TV, Radio, the Internet and Computing. This is the philosophical direction in which the Information Industry has been trending for some time now. It doesn’t matter HOW you get what you want, only that you get it quickly. (There is a moral question here that I am going to pointedly ignore.)

As you can imagine, this technology has amazingly far reaching effects for the entire computing industry. Instead of buying your computer mail-order from some place like Gateway, or buying an off-the-shelf "sealed box" system like Compaq, you get the best of both worlds. A consumer will be able to walk into a store, decide on a hardware platform, and then pick and choose the peripherals, which can be custom installed in minutes. By the time the check is written, a custom built computer is being loaded into the buyer’s trunk. It also means that the hacks who have made their beer money reconfiguring hardware for the technologically stunted will be out of a job. Certainly, there will be exceptions, but most users will finally be able to Plug and Play instead of "Plug and Pray."

Are there drawbacks to Device Bay? In the short term, absolutely. Hardware based on older specifications will experience an even faster decay in value. And there certainly won’t be any move to write new drivers for older, non-compliant components. So, who gets hurt by the new technology? The same ones that always do: the lowest income folks with the oldest Legacy hardware (a Politically Correct way of saying "Old Junk"). Eventually they will be able to afford a cheap system, like the sub $800 machines now on the market. But there will be a lag between when Device Bay is successfully viable, and when it actually helps more people buy and maintain a computer. The fact that the specification was set by Compaq, Microsoft and Intel makes it even more likely to be adopted rapidly by the hardware community, so don’t expect the technology industry to shed tears for the electronically dispossessed...they never have before.

If you look at the coming storm of change and feel a twinge of fear, go to your garage, open the tool box and get out your socket set and driver. Think about how many individual tools you’d need if that gadget hadn’t been invented. Now, if we only had more hands...

Peace,

WebWalker