One of the interesting features of the AlphaSmart 3000 is the ability to connect to a fairly broad range of personal computers. This includes computers from the

One of the interesting features of the AlphaSmart 3000 is the ability to connect to a fairly broad range of personal computers. This includes computers from the IBM AT onward, Macintosh Plus onward, and Apple IIgs. In other words, it supports the ADB, AT, PS/2, and USB interfaces. On top of that, USB Mass Storage support was first built into Mac OS 9 and Windows 2000. The former was about 3 months prior to the AlphaSmart 3000 release and the latter was around the time of AlphaSmart 3000 release. In other words, short of providing their own driver or software to transfer data, the only means transferring data was by pushing it through a keyboard interface. This may have been acceptable, but undesirable, for home users. Keep in mind, it would have traded ease of use for speed. It would have been less desirable in the education market since it would have meant managing additional software on classroom computers while being more difficult to use. On top of that, there may have been technical reasons. It looks like it is using a PDIUSBD11D USB controller, connected to a DragonBall EZ microcontroller via an I2C bus. Perhaps someone with more knowledge in this domain can comment on that aspect.