It's not a small issue to add USB host support. USB host controllers are generally integrated into x86 chipsets, or PCI-based. We have no PCI bus on the empeg, which means this gets pretty hard. A USB slave doesn't deal with the packet ordering and scheduling needed by a host, and doesn't need DMA access to main memory.

Our only option is a SA1101 chip, which works with the SA1100. However, there is (a) not room for this on the PCB and (b) it costs as much as the CPU itself!

If we fitted a USB host port, we would then have to include with the unit a USB host<>host adaptor to allow the 99% of users who just want to download tunes to the unit to use USB at all.

Sorry, but USB host is not on the menu :(

Hugo