12.7. External Buses

One of the most recent entries in the field of interface buses is the whole class of external buses. This includes USB, FireWire, and IEEE1284 (parallel-port-based external bus). These interfaces are somewhat similar to older and not-so-external technology, such as PCMCIA/CardBus and even SCSI.

Conceptually, these buses are neither full-featured interface buses (like PCI is) nor dumb communication channels (like the serial ports are). It's hard to classify the software that is needed to exploit their features, as it's usually split into two levels: the driver for the hardware controller (like drivers for PCI SCSI adaptors or PCI controllers introduced in the Section 12.1) and the driver for the specific "client" device (like sd.c handles generic SCSI disks and so-called PCI drivers deal with cards plugged in the bus).