Sophisticated Circuits FAQ

Sophisticated Circuits' Original Products and USB Macs

Sophisticated Circuits' original ADB products are

PowerKey Pro Model 600
PowerKey Pro Model 200
"Classic" PowerKey
PowerKey Remote
PowerPad
Desktop Dialer

These devices were designed specifically for use with the Apple Desktop Bus, or ADB, for connecting to older Macs. ADB ports were the connectors Apple used for keyboards, mice, and other utility accessories on the SE models up through the PowerMac series, including the blue & white G3.

USB (Universal Serial Bus) is the new cross-platform standard for many computer accessories, including keyboards, mice, etc. Newer Macs, such as the G5, iMac, eMac, Mac mini, and newer PowerBook models, now have USB ports, while the blue & white G3 was a transition model with both ADB and USB ports.

While they may be used for similar results, such as typing and moving the mouse, USB development is very different from ADB. Our ADB products' high level of software to hardware integration relied on features of the proprietary Apple Desktop Bus, and therefore need to be re-designed to be fully compatible with USB systems.

USB Development

We are now developing products for use with USB. Our first USB device, Kick-off!, is the only USB hardware device to provide comprehensive system monitoring and automatic recovery from common system failures. Kick-off! is widely used on both Mac and Windows computers in server applications, kiosks, and many other types of installations where unattended machines must be available at all times.

We have also released our USB PowerKey Pro 650, bringing our award-winning PowerKey products to modern Macintosh systems.

We are working to bring our USB products to other platforms, such as Windows and Linux. See our article titled Other Platforms for more information.

We do not currently have any specific plans to redesign our other older ADB products for use with USB; however, we are always considering new paths of development and we haven't completely ruled out any possibilities.

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 offer adapters which allow you to connect ADB devices to a Mac's USB port. These devices are primarily designed to convert input devices such as keyboards, mice and trackballs, but some may offer support for other ADB devices as well, with the addition of special software to provide ADB hardware device registration on the USB Mac.

We only guarantee compatibility and provide support for our ADB products when they are used on Macs with built-in ADB ports. Our ADB products were not designed for use with USB, and in general, we do not recommend using ADB-to-USB converters with them.

That said, here is some additional information about our ADB products which may be helpful:

PowerPad works just like any ADB Mac keyboard and therefore should work well with any ADB-to-USB adapter.

PowerKey, PowerKey Pro and Desktop Dialer will not load their software unless their hardware registers on the Apple Desktop Bus at startup. Only those adapters with special software for ADB registration can provide a way for our software to load on a USB system. And these products will only work with those systems which include code for ADB devices that require registration.

PowerKey, PowerKey Pro and Desktop Dialer use the ADB for communication between our software and our hardware. The ADB-to-USB adapter must maintain a constant connection while the system is running: if the software-to-hardware communication is interrupted, even briefly, a restart may be necessary to reestablish the connection.

At shut down, the PowerKey software communicates certain information, such as scheduled start times and power management events, to the hardware over the ADB. If the PowerKey software is interrupted or pre-empted during shut down, events may not be stored correctly, and subsequently, the hardware may not perform as expected.

Rebound! cannot restart a crashed USB Mac, even with an adapter. Rebound!'s crash restarting method relies on features built into certain ADB Macs which are not available on USB Macs. When crashed, USB Macs will not respond to the keyboard's restart code, as it is not built into the USB Mac system, nor is USB active when the system has crashed.

To restart a crashed USB computer, use Kick-off!.

For information about ADB to USB adapters and how they may work with other devices, contact the specific manufacturer. A list of adapters may be found at MacInTouch's USB Guide.

Blue & White G3

The blue & white G3 includes a standard ADB port, which can be used to connect our ADB products.

Rebound!, Desktop Dialer and PowerPad will work just like they do on other ADB Macs. These products all include pass-through ports so that you can connect them to other ADB devices in a chain. However, these devices operate independently of other hardware and so they do not need a keyboard, or any other device, connected to them.

PowerKey and PowerKey Pro have two blue & white G3 compatibility issues. The first is reliability of externally triggered startups (timed, phone, power returns, etc). 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. In our testing, this occurs randomly, about once in every six to twenty startups. Some customers report no problems, while others have the problem every time.

When this happens, you can press the "reset" button on the front of the computer to start up the system. We do not know why this happens, nor do we have any other work-around or automated solution for this problem. We have seen reports of similar blue & white G3 start up problems not involving our products, but we do not know of any solutions.

The second issue concerns keyboard startup. PowerKey and PowerKey Pro use the ADB keyboard's "power-on" signal to turn on their outlets. If you are using an ADB keyboard's power button, both PowerKey and PowerKey Pro will turn on their outlets when you start up the computer. If you press the power button on a USB keyboard or the power button on the computer, the "Classic" PowerKey can sense the system starting up and will turn on its outlets; however,the PowerKey Pro can not detect this signal, and so its outlets will not turn on at startup.

There are several possible work-arounds for using PowerKey with a USB keyboard, depending on the model:

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 Adobe PDF form, in our software library. Advanced scripting information is included with the PowerKey software, in the Extras folder.