A Fond Look at Some Obsolete Ports

StealMyWiFi writes "C-NET.co.uk has a lighthearted look at ten of the best obsolete ports. The biggest surprise is that C-NET claims Firewire is obsolete, which will come as a surprise to the millions of people worldwide who are still using it, especially in light of the story that Firewire is due to get a massive speed boost! The same could be said for their claims about SCSI, although from a consumer point of view I guess that's fairer."

Comments

C-Net

[Etrias]

C-net couldn't find an obsolete port with two hands, a map and a flashlight.

Re:C-Net

[corbettw]

Which is ironic, since C-net, maps, and flashlights are all obsolete themselves.

Re:C-Net

[Anonymous Coward]

What exactly have flashlights been obsoleted by?

Re:C-Net

[Anonymous Coward]

Cell phone displays.

Re:C-Net

[gardyloo]

Girls.

    Oh... sorry. I thought you said fleshlights.

Re:C-Net

[jellomizer]

That and I think they missed some Big ones.
Serial 9 pin and 15 pin,
CGA Video,
VGA,
ATA Keyboard,
DIP Switches,
Jumpers,
Many Generations of Memory Slots

But what I mess most is Serial and Parallel. It was great easy to make hardware and have it interact with your computer. And most OS's even good old DOS had easy to use ways of accessing the Com Port information. USB often adds an extra level of complexity for home job hardware.

Re:C-Net

[Zombywuf]

Over here in Europe everything has them. As mentioned in the article. Just below the bit where it says they're obsolete.

Has obsolete been redefined?

And where is RS232? What about midi/joystick ports? This is just blatant C-Net karma^Hpagerank whoring and it was allowed in without a second thought.

Re:C-Net

[commodoresloat]

Nothing -- it's just that after Bill Gates was asked to change a lightbulb, darkness was declared the new standard.

Re:C-Net

[hattig]

No one in Europe would buy a TV that didn't have at least one SCART socket today, and two would be desirable. It's not obsolete in any way, shape or form (although HDMI will replace it in about 5 years, so it doesn't have a future). Lots of people have extensive SCART switching equipment to get all their AV gear connected to the limited number of ports on their TV. I bet most people a few years ago would have said that about 5 SCART inputs on a TV would be ideal. The RGB support, even if limited to a single SCART socket on the TV, has meant that usually at least the satellite TV or DVD player had a really decent connection to the home TV, which along with PAL has probably explained the slower uptake of HDTV over here.

ADB is an example of an obsolete connector. Why is this article talking about active, popular ports as being obsolete, or did it travel backwards in time 10 years?

Re:C-Net

[lgw]

SCSI is a very interesting case: the SCSI port is dead and gone, but the SCSI protocol is used more than ever. In addition to iSCSI and SAS and Fibre Channel storage in the datacenter, USB storage all uses the SCSI command set for some reason.

Re:C-Net

[Beardo the Bearded]

Yes. They're very enterprisey now.

You aren't still using a plain flashlight with an incandescent bulb, are you? ;)

Re:C-Net

[gad_zuki!]

Yeah they missed some pretty other obvious:

qotd 17/udp Quote of the Day
gopher 70/tcp Gopher
finger 79/tcp Finger
pcmail-srv 158/tcp PCMail Server
audit 182/tcp Unisys Audit SITP

Re:C-Net

[MorePower]

And where is RS232?

That's the port that computer makers keep trying to force into obsolescence, despite the fact that we still desperately need them to talk to all the tons of legacy industrial equipment installed all over the world in the last 20 years. Don't encourage them, I need my RS232 ports.

Oh yeah, USB to RS232 works, sometimes.

Re:C-Net

[billcopc]

Yep, SCART beats the pants off of our crappy American connections, and it's been around since the 70's. While it can't compete with modern HD component (YPbPr), it's still way cleaner and more accurate than S-Video with little artifacting. Plus it's relatively easy to mod a SCART output into VGA, to hook up those old game consoles to a computer display.

Re:C-Net

[Mr2001]

USB uses an antiquated SCSI command set, unfortunately. That's why, even though you can fit 4 TB or more into a Drobo, it has to be split up into 2 TB volumes.

Re:C-Net

[bXTr]

And where is RS232?

It went with R2D2 and C3PO to sneak aboard the Death Star.

Re:C-Net

[TapeCutter]

FTFA : "it's nearly impossible to say PCMCIA at all, without getting all the letters jumbled up and your technological pants tied in a knot"

I agree, he didn't do his reaearch. The quote above describes an early marketing bug, a meme was quickly released with the following solution...

PCMCIA = "People Can't Memorize Computer Industry Acronymns"

Re:C-Net

[adolf]

I miss finger. Back when the net was much more naive -- when everyone's mail server had port port 25 open and would gladly relay mail for anyone -- one could find some hapless nit on IRC, finger their ISP's terminal server, snag their user name, derive from that their real name, find their home address in a telephone directory, and fire up Mapblast or Terraserver and spook the hell out them by saying things like "That's a nice lake that you live next to. The water is very pretty this time of night, isn't it?"

Now that I think of it, it's really surprising that I didn't wind up in jail when I was a kid.

I think I'll install fingerd on my WRT54G and stuff some random information into it, just for old time's sake.

Re:C-Net

[arth1]

There's a good argument to having a PS/2 port, and that is that it runs on its own IRQ with low-level drivers. If you have a runaway app, it's nice to have a working CTRL-ALT-DELETE that won't be delayed two minutes because USB is slowed down with the rest of the system.

Re:C-Net

[Digi-John]

Anybody who does real computing (Yeah, your Alienware is cool, I'm not talking about that) probably wants RS232. I use it all the time to get console on a variety of devices. You all may be familiar with the BlueGene supercomputers? The development board I use to test things for that platform uses RS232 for a console.
USB to RS232 is crap.

Re:C-Net

[MikeBabcock]

The D-Link models are no better. A straight motherboard RS-232 port works so much better when connecting to a modem or serial printer.

Yes, I use serial printers with work.

Lava's PCI serial cards were at the top of my recommendation list back when they worked with most computers, but now I find a lot of machines (Dell!) won't even boot with them installed.

Digi makes intelligent I/O cards that work quite well up to 19200 but their Linux drivers are incredibly bad and there's a lot of glitches at 38400 and above.

SCSI isn't what it used to be

[eln]

SCSI wasn't any fun anymore once they put in auto termination anyway. Long ago are the days when you couldn't get your SCSI disks to show up, no matter how you chained them or where you put the terminator. The only way to get it working was to cut yourself trying to connect the third drive for the 500th time and bleed all over the cables while swearing loudly. After that, everything would work just fine. You see, the dark lord will not allow SCSI to work without a blood sacrifice.

Re:SCSI isn't what it used to be

[Ritz_Just_Ritz]

I haven't purchased a SCSI part in nearly 10 years. Once SATA became relatively commonplace and 3Ware was shown to be reliable, I just never looked back. On the highest of the high end where budget isn't a constraint I guess it might still be useful. Otherwise, stick a fork in it.

Cheers,

Re:SCSI isn't what it used to be

[NMerriam]

Oh, come on. SCSI will *always* be fun, termination or not. Just the act of putting an adaptor on an adaptor on another adaptor so that you can connect a controller to a disk is an adventure. Just calculating the minimum number of adaptors you need to own to be able to connect any two arbitrary SCSI devices could keep Stephen Hawking busy for an afternoon.

SCSI is one of those technologies where you inevitably wonder "how can engineers be so brilliant, and yet so colossally stupid, at the same time?"

Re:SCSI isn't what it used to be

[calebt3]

I found it also helped if I sacrificed virgin RAM it helped also. Brought to you by the Department of Redundancy Department.

Re:SCSI isn't what it used to be

[jimicus]

You can't get 15Krpm drives in SATA variants, and SAS will allow you to bond up to 4 3Gbps channels together into one bit 12Gbps channel. (Not that it does you much good unless you've got a fairly hefty array as otherwise there's no way a disk subsystem will sustain 3Gbps in random access usage).

Re:SCSI isn't what it used to be

[Gr8Apes]

I haven't purchased a SCSI part in nearly 10 years. That would be because SCSI is so darn reliable. My Mylex 1164 and 9 and 18 GB drives are still running fine, except I chunked the drives in favor of 36GB drives about 6 years ago.... what was I saying about reliability again?

Once SATA became relatively commonplace and 3Ware was shown to be reliable, I just never looked back. On the highest of the high end where budget isn't a constraint I guess it might still be useful. Otherwise, stick a fork in it. SCSI is still faster, and last time I checked, it was very very difficult to make a 200+ drive RAID tower out of SATA drives. (It's been a few years...)

Re:SCSI isn't what it used to be

[Ephemeriis]

These days SCSI is serial, just like ATA. Modern drives use SAS, or Serial Attached SCSI, and they'll still blow the doors off SATA drives. If you absolutely, positively, have to connect massive numbers of very fast drives - SAS is the way to go. Far more bandwidth available than anything SATA has to offer.

And...I still use good ol' parallel SCSI all the time. Lots of tape drives still use it. I just installed a new server last month with an external LTO drive connected with SCSI.

SCSI is about as far from "obsolete" as you can get when it comes to servers.

Re:SCSI isn't what it used to be

[sjames]

And of course, let's not forget the connector screws where 1/1000th of a turn was the difference between a 'loose' error prone connection and a broken off screw. And who can forget the cables that were fully as flexible as rebar.

Re:SCSI isn't what it used to be

[lgw]

As one of those engineers let me say: it still takes less fiddling than supporting all of the HTML and browser/version "standards". :)

Re:SCSI isn't what it used to be

[thesupraman]

SAS bandwidth, 1.5 or 3.0 GBit/second, SATA bandwidth, 1.5 or 3.0 GBit/second
SAS has TCQ, SATA has NCQ for command overlapping.
SAS has multipath IO, SATA has port multipliers
SAS cables are rated to 8m, SATA at 1m, hmm an actual difference!
Try to learn something before you start spouting crap.
SAS is available with lower latency drives (15krpm), SATA can easy match it in bandwidth.

Anyone serious uses FC for big arrays anyway, go look at a TPC-C lead benchmark some time.

Re:SCSI isn't what it used to be

[lgw]

SCSI always pushed the limits of what you could do with the technology of the day, and parallel busses are hard to begin with. The impedance of the wires had to be right, the correct pairs of wires had to be twisted together, and you *really* couldn't get away with using a single shared ground wire.

Each doubling of speed on the SCSI cable was sufficiently hard to pull off that cables which were fine for the previous generation simply wouldn't cut it for the new generation, but you can't tell by looking at a cable what speed it was made for.

I think the final SCSI parallel standard didn't even support cables, it was only for backplanes in RAID cabinets.

Well, that's all fixed with SAS. Parallel is just too hard to go forward with.

My favorite obsolete port is #23

[stuporglue]

Although I've still had to use it in the last couple years for a couple of odd routers.

This cracks me up

[microbee]

Sadly, PS/2 was yet another victim of USB, which doesn't care what you plug into it, the electrical slut.

Re:This cracks me up

[Archangel Michael]

Crap, I hate you. And my apologies to SNL, Chevy Chase and Jane Curtain but here it goes ....

USB you Electronic Slut

Re:This cracks me up

[Dever]

nobody ever ever gets the 'jane, you ignorant slut.' jokes though. invariably some has to to do this:

regarding Saturday Night Live and its Weekend Update skits:

A frequent feature of Update during this time was Point-Counterpoint, in which Curtin and Aykroyd made vicious and humorously inappropriate ad hominem attacks on each other's positions on a variety of topics, in a parody of the 60 Minutes segment of the same name ...

Aykroyd regularly began his reply with "Jane, you ignorant slut," which became another of the many SNL catch phrases. (Curtin frequently began her reply with, "Dan, you pompous ass".)

there, now i have passed the torch to someone else who will explain this joke to the slash audience in a year or two again...

What about BSD ports?

[Anonymous Crowhead]

Netcraft confirmed their obsoletism years ago.

Re:What about BSD ports?

[Epsillon]

Still Alive, BSD version, sung to the tune of Jonathan Coulton's "Still Alive" from the game "Portal," originally vocalised by Ellen McLain in character as GLaDOS.

This was a triumph,
I'm logging a note here: Huge success,
We had to dummynet the heavy traffic,
BSD Unix (R),
We code what we must because we can,
For the good of all of us,
Including vendors as well,

But there's no sense arguing with licensing dinks,
You just keep debugging so the PR count shrinks,
And releases get done,
Raymond gets a new gun,
But despite this we are,
Still alive!

I'm not even angry,
I'm being so sincere right now,
Even though we got here first and beat you,
Now you say that we're dying,
And this is the year GNU succeeds,
As you make statistics up,
We are so happy for you,

Now these points of data made our code really shine,
And we're out of beta, we're releasing on time,
So I'm glad you think you won,
There's so much needs to be done,
But regardless we are,
Still alive!

So go post on Slashdot,
I think I'd prefer to read the lists,
Maybe you'll get your own kernel someday,
Maybe that Hurd thing,
That was a joke, ha ha, fat chance,
Anyway, this code is great,
It's so consistent and neat,

Look at me still gloating when there's -CURRENT to plan,
When it's said and done you'll know that we're the best "clan",
We are organised and clean,
We go where you've never been,
And you know that we are,
Still alive!

Believe me, we are still alive,
We're on the server and we're still alive,
We're on the desktop and we're still alive,
We power MacOS and we're still alive,
We're running routers and we're still alive,
Still alive,
Still alive!

So there. :)

Very unfair to SCART

[El Cabri]

Describing SCART as a bad idea is very unfair. It's true you couldn't tell which signals were being monitored (unless a sophisticated TV would tell you), but consider this : thanks to SCART compliance, all European TVs on from the early-to-mid 80s were component RGB monitors. This was great for the consoles and home computers of the time. In the US at the same time, TVs only had RF inputs, and only later on the mediocre composite and S-video inputs, and only in the late 90s - early 2000s, and on higher end TVs saw component input generalized. And then not RGB component, rather that inferior differential component. So SCART has forced european TVs a twenty years headstart on the quality of analog input and changed the experience of everyone with a TV-based home computer in the 80s.

Also it was bi-directionnal : a composite signal could travel from the TV to the peripheral and be simultaneously fed back from the peripheral to the TV. This allowed over-the-air pay-TV with a de-scrambler box that was simply plugged in on one of the SCARTs.

Re:Very unfair to SCART

[ScrewMaster]

So SCART has forced european TVs a twenty years headstart on the quality of analog input and changed the experience of everyone with a TV-based home computer in the 80s.

Maybe it would be fairer to say that the Europeans were where they should have been at that point in time, while we were twenty years behind.

Re:Very unfair to SCART

[Ilgaz]

Lets not forget the ultimate practical inventions on SCART (which is still used!) like sending TV/Display "Switch to me" signal. (I guess over pin18) It is amazing that people designed HDMI missed it.

In Europe, when you turn on a set top box, it will send a signal to TV from a special pin saying "Switch to me" and your TV will automatically switch to the device. If it is high end TV, it may ignore with a setting though. Some devices also send "Release my channel" and if your TV is wise enough, it will go back to last input source (or tuner). At least my cheap DVB-S receiver does it.

They design a digital interface in 2000s and forget to put such thing in spec. HDMI could get much more popular if people didn't to click a button 4-5 times to switch to a satellite.

Another guy mentioned: You design a thing which should replace SCART, promise people it is not just evil DRM, it is for ease of use and you still make it "Can be plugged one way only". At some houses, replacing a broken HDMI cable may need 2-3 guys, to handle the display.

CNET is a IT oriented site, they have hard time to understand the TV World and why TV guys always "Stick with working thing". SCART is a thing from 1977, it will be there until EBU decides it is obsolete. TV doesn't work like computers, you can't fool around with standards unless there is absolute need for change. Whoever designed SCART and made it patent free (or cheap) with such scalability deserves a award for it.

Re:Very unfair to SCART

[Anonymous Coward]

Looks like your sig has some validity to it... :-)

Re:Very unfair to SCART

[Tim Browse]

They design a digital interface in 2000s and forget to put such thing in spec.

They got it in eventually in HDMI v1.2a, according to wikipedia (the CEC channel). Of course, it's completely optional and hence I've yet to meet a piece of eqpt that supports it.

This may also have something to do with it:

Alternative names for CEC are Anynet (Samsung), Aquos Link (Sharp), BRAVIA Theatre Sync (Sony), Regza Link (Toshiba), RIHD (Onkyo), Simplink (LG), Viera Link/EZ-Sync (Panasonic/JVC), Easylink (Philips) and NetCommand for HDMI (Mitsubishi).

Muppets.

It's like they were trying to outdo Bluetooth in the 'dead in the water launch' awards.

Re:Very unfair to SCART

[Dannkape]

we'd invent a whole new way of getting video from a DVD player or other device to our TVs. I didn't know we had DVD-players back in 1977 when SCART first appeared...

Re:Very unfair to SCART

[mctk]

All Americans suck because their TV's are 20 years behind.

This is going to sound strange...

[an.echte.trilingue]

This is going to sound really strange, but I always found that licking the connectors solved most of my problems.

Re:This is going to sound strange...

[Anonymous Coward]

I always found that licking the connectors solved most of my problems.

That's pretty much a good rule of thumb everywhere in life.

Re:This is going to sound strange...

[pete-classic]

Yes, but did it help make the drive work?

-Peter

Re:This is going to sound strange...

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you lick the male connectors or the female connectors?

Re:This is going to sound strange...

[stonecypher]

You know, in some parts of the world, "connector" is a phrase for public bus, which makes that advice ... curious. Then again, in other parts of the world, public bus is a phrase for connector. So whatever.

Re:This is going to sound strange...

[Mr. Underbridge]

Corollary: if licking on it doesn't help, blowing will. Always good for Nintendo cartridges and...um...other things.

Re:This is going to sound strange...

[Beardo the Bearded]

You had a Girls Gone Wild NES game?

Huh.

Re:This is going to sound strange...

[Nimey]

And... spit or swallow?

Re:This is going to sound strange...

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't forget about sodomizing the ports with a penis.

They missed some obvious ones.

[ZombieRoboNinja]

The MS-DOS port of "Mortal Kombat" comes to mind...

Firewire's not obsolete

[Naughty Bob]

It has just not achieved the success of its nemesis USB. But there are niche areas where Firewire is huge, and will continue to be so.

After all, the recording industry, where Firewire is quite popular, still use god-awful MIDI.

Re:Firewire's not obsolete

[dgatwood]

When USB actually works for audio/video, I'll be impressed. If you've ever hung out on an audio board trying to help people with computer problems, you find two things are consistently true: 1. People with FireWire audio interfaces rarely have problems that can't be clearly and quickly pinned on a poor choice of FireWire card. 2. People with USB audio interfaces constantly have problems with random pops and crackles. There are exceptions to both rules, but the difference in reliability is staggering.

And video cameras basically just plain don't use USB at all. You might find a few camcorders that provide USB for reading still photos off of flash cards, but that's about it. Okay, so there are a few low-end flash-based MPEG solutions out there. None of the better gear (e.g. HDV) uses USB, though. It's all FireWire. Outside of really low-end gear, USB isn't even in the running.

The thing is, IMHO, what's really dead is USB 2. For disks, eSATA kicks its butt every day and twice on Sunday, bus-powered disks notwithstanding (and even that limitation is changing RSN). Thus, eSATA will likely obliterate USB for external drives in the fairly near future, for both cost and performance reasons. For A/V tasks, FireWire leaves USB in the dust. The only devices USB supports well are input devices like tablets, mice, and keyboards. As a result, USB 3 will probably be largely or completely stillborn, and USB will eventually be relegated to slow devices like flash sticks, keyboards, and mice, as it really doesn't do anything else very well....

Re:Firewire's not obsolete

[LaminatorX]

USB can never "flat out beat" Firewire for one reason: isochronas transfers. Firewire controllers have their own integrated timing/synch control, while USB lets the CPU play traffic cop and uses a buffer to make up the difference. That's fine for copying files or for low-quality streams, but when moving lots of high quality audio or video data, the buffer can run dry while the CPU is working on processing said data for output/playback, resulting in loss of synch, droped frames, and audio pops.

Re:Firewire's not obsolete

[je ne sais quoi]

I used to be a huge firewire fan but when it comes down to it, USB just flat out beats the 1394 standards.

How so? I back up my system and synchronize my laptop to my desktop using both firewire 800 and USB 2.0 and the firewire is faster. One great thing about firewire is that I use it as an internet connection with my desktop as the server. Just enable internet sharing under preferences (Mac OS X) and the desktop acts as a DHCP server for anything plugged into the firewire. Then I just plug my laptop into my desktop and then run rsync. No foolin' around required. My opinion about the mac book air was that it looked cute, but no firewire 800 means I won't ever get it because I've grown so used to the ease of using it.

Re:Firewire's not obsolete

[Naughty Bob]

>The thing is, IMHO, what's really dead is USB 2.

Not been using much in the way of tech recently? USB = Cable.

Regardless of specification, USB has a massive, almost ubiquitous presence, which translates to an unstoppable inertia. Only something which is 10x better, but can use the same sockets stands a chance. Which brings me to your other howler-

>USB 3 will probably be largely or completely stillborn

Are you the first /. cable fanboy?

Re:Firewire's not obsolete

[Typoboy]

Firewire has time coded packets for a/v data.
USB does not.

Firewire allows connection of multiple hosts together, and has a simple chaining topology as well as hubs, USB does not.

I call fail.

Re:Firewire's not obsolete

[Fneb]

Care to state why MIDI is 'god-awful'? The hardware involved in MIDI isn't your crappy consumer synthesizer that you hear when you play a .mid file on your computer. That's a crappy consumer MIDI synthesizer. Hardware MIDI is a superb standard that has been around for a long time, allowing connections between keyboards, synths, samplers, computers and sequencers with (next to?) no delay. At least, no delay that I've ever noticed. If you're going to call something 'god-awful', try to know what you're talking about.

Re:Firewire's not obsolete

[Naughty Bob]

If you're going to call something 'god-awful', try to know what you're talking about.

I worked as a recording engineer for a little over 2 years, but quit because the popularity/glamour of the job keeps the wages down.

MIDI was a revolution in about 1986, but has stood largely still since.

If you compare what was going on in 1986, computer-wise, with today's tech, you'll see that there's been the odd improvement.

Re:Firewire's not obsolete

[harrkev]

AMEN! MIDI is still just as useful now as it ever was -- not bad for a standard that is over 20 years old.

A lot of keyboards now have USB connectors, but that is basicly building a USB-to-MIDI adapter into the keyboard.

USB can't really replace MIDI, as USB is a firmly-fixed one master controlling many slaves type of arrangement. With MIDI, there really doesn't need to be a master, as such, and I can imagine some setups where master/slave setups just wouldn't work, or would at least make the software a lot more complicated.

Now, MIDI could do with a bit of freshening up. Perhaps quadruple the bandwidth (while still being backwards compatable), and switch to mini-DIN connectors.

Re:Firewire's not obsolete

[dgatwood]

Regardless of specification, USB has a massive, almost ubiquitous presence, which translates to an unstoppable inertia. Only something which is 10x better, but can use the same sockets stands a chance.

Flip that around and I doubt you'll agree: Microsoft Windows has an almost ubiquitous presence, which translates into....

USB is ubiquitous in terms of the port being provided. It is not remotely ubiquitous in terms of devices that connect to it except in the consumer space. Even there, however, it is already starting to fade away in many areas. More and more printers are starting to offer networking capabilities built-in, up to and including Wi-Fi in many cases. Most homes don't just have one computer anymore, so the days of having a cheap USB printer hooked to the computer don't cut it. In the keyboard/mouse arena, Bluetooth is rapidly gaining ground. Wireless USB might take some of that market back, but even still, it significantly reduces the number of things people will do with traditional wired USB. The use of USB for hard drives will almost certainly start to wane; it is already almost as cheap to buy a drive case with eSATA as one without, so the chicken-egg problem of eSATA adoption is pretty much taken care of. We'll almost certainly see more major manufacturers adding eSATA in the near future. At that point, there won't be any real reason to continue using USB for hard drives (apart from using it for existing hardware, of course).

The long and the short of it is this: USB's only purpose for existing in the long run is for small, portable devices that need power, e.g. flash sticks that you carry on your keychain. For everything else, the trend is clearly heading towards shared peripherals that you can use in a multi-computer household and towards wireless connectivity in general. I'm definitely not a "cable fanboi" as you put it. In my opinion, at least in the medium term, wires are dead. Cable TV is dead, too, except as a provider of IP networking. They just don't know it yet.

USB 3 will almost definitely be stillborn. Why? Because it offers no real advantages over USB 2 + eSATA. By requiring an optical connection to get the faster speed, USB 3 will almost certainly require substantially greater parts cost than USB 2 in order to get any additional performance, making it significantly more expensive for motherboard and drive vendors to adopt than eSATA, all without offering any advantages over eSATA. Basic rule of consumer economics: higher cost -> fewer purchases. Also, the cables will likely be dramatically more expensive, less flexible, and more fragile, leading to an erosion of consumer confidence.

The most important reason USB 3 is DOA, though, is that there are nearly zero devices out there other than hard drives and Gig-E dongles that can realistically take advantage of the extra bandwidth beyond what USB 2 offers. For storage, eSATA will be firmly entrenched long before USB 3 becomes deployed broadly enough to matter. Since Gig-E dongles are pretty much a niche market, that makes USB 3 a complete non-starter. The potential simply isn't there. Not to mention that if it is designed as badly as USB 2, the CPU hit for high throughput transactions will make people want to throw the drive in a dumpster.

The only thing USB 3 has going for it at all over eSATA is that it provides power for devices, and since powered eSATA is coming later this year, even that "win" in the USB column will be gone. I'm not saying drive manufacturers will stop shipping USB silicon, but if a drive manufacturer is choosing whether to switch from USB 2 to USB 3 or keep selling USB 2 and add eSATA, it's a no-brainer, and USB 3 doesn't stand a chance of winning that battle. Thus, in the long term, eSATA will dominate. It's just a matter of time before USB ports become largely irrelevant, having given way to networked devices, wireless protocols, and eSATA. Anyone who believes otherwise is kidding him/herself.

Re:Firewire's not obsolete

[fm6]

Media folks like firewire because it actually performs better for the kind of data transfers they do than USB. If you look at the plain consumer-level specs of USB and Firewire, it seems obvious that USB is "faster", but that is not always the case. Which is why many ignorant folk (including, alas, myself) have asserted that USB had superseded firewire.

As for MIDI, that sort of thing isn't peculiar to the recording industry. Sometimes a bad design continues to be used just because it isn't worth upgrading. The QWERTY keyboard is a prime example.

Re:Firewire's not obsolete

[Anonymous Coward]

Most hardware implementations now will allow firewire to access just one virtual memory mapping so you can't play the old tricks.

Re:Firewire's not obsolete

[vought]

NASA's Space Shuttle also uses IEEE 1394b to monitor debris (foam, ice) which may hit the vehicle during launch.

Way to quote out of context.

1394b Firewire as implemented by NASA is a secure local bus that provides time accurate signaling and data transfer. Something which no other local bus technology could provide at that speed.

I appreciate your snarkyness, but typically, NASA doesn't choose stuff on a whim.

Re:Firewire's not obsolete

[catmistake]

Well, you're right, but... its just... listen, fw400 beats USB2... its nearly twice as fast for most applications, but fw800 simply decimates USB2. They are in different classes altogether. For a long time, and afaik still, there isn't even a drive out there that can max out the bandwidth available over fw800. Its sick. So if you please, enough of the understatements. Does anyone compare USB2 to SATA? There's a reason they don't. And for the same reason it is unfair and silly to compare fw800 to USB2. Its like comparing a diesel VW bus to the Space Shuttle.

Re:Firewire's not obsolete

[slartibart]

USB can never "flat out beat" Firewire for one reason: isochronas transfers.
 
Um, "isochronas"? Let me guess, you've heard the word "asynchronous", but never seen it in print?

not obsolete...

[TheSHAD0W]

...Now only if it were secure...

Re:not obsolete...

[prockcore]

Um.. no, it's a problem with firewire. It's part of firewire's spec that devices have full DMA access.

There are patches to disable firewire dma (even on windows), but some firewire devices will break.

Annoying 'article', here's the list

[hcdejong]

Without [next] the [next] stupid [next] clickthroughs [next] and [next] ads [next]:
1. DB-25 parallel port
2. PS/2
3. FireWire
4. SCSI
5. SCART
6. ISA
7. AGP
8. PCMCIA
9. Kryten's groin (from Red Dwarf)
10. game cartridge port

Re:Annoying 'article', here's the list

[Kjella]

Well, since they include internal "ports" like ISA and AGP, I'll tell you the one I wish they DID get rid of and it's the 4-pin AT power connector. It'll get stuck like it's glued on with superglue, and is my #1 cause of cuts, bruises, yanked cables and general mayhem inside a computer case. There's nothing like finally dragging it loose only to have your hand go ballistic through the cabinet while snagging other cables along the way so the entire machine needs checking afterwards. That and the 40-pin ATA cables and drives with with no notches and pin 1 marked by invisible ink, but that's fortunately long ago.

SCSI? It just changed its face.

[SharpFang]

SCSI is faaaar from dead. Actually, SCSI is dominating the market currently, killing all the competition. Except it's done with weird parallel buses with 50 different incompatible connectors. And it changed the name, but it's still the same old SCSI protocol.

* ATAPI is SCSI over ATA - all non-SATA (or non-SCSI ;) CD-ROMs and DVD-ROMs use it.
* SATA is SCSI over a special serial cable. Meaning - only obsolete PATA disks are non-SCSI. All CD drives are SCSI this or another way.
* USB Storage (pendrives, external drives etc) are all SCSI.

Essentially mostly every mass storage device you connect to the computer is SCSI nowadays.

Re:SCSI? It just changed its face.

[asuffield]

SATA is SCSI over a special serial cable. Meaning - only obsolete PATA disks are non-SCSI. All CD drives are SCSI this or another way.

Really isn't. The SATA and SCSI protocols are similar, but there is a real SCSI over serial cable, and it's called SAS (Serial-Attached SCSI). It's the same connectors and cables as SATA, running the real SCSI protocol. The drives are the same good old SCSI drives, costing ten times and much and running ten times as fast as their SATA cousins. It has replaced Ultra-640 SCSI as the system of choice for high-end RAID cages.

USB Storage (pendrives, external drives etc) are all SCSI

Not even close. USB mass storage is almost, but not quite, entirely unlike SCSI.

ATAPI is SCSI over ATA

That one's true though.

Re:SCSI? It just changed its face.

[SharpFang]

Not even close. USB mass storage is almost, but not quite, entirely unlike SCSI.

They support SCSI Primary Command (SPC) Set and SCSI Block Command (SBC) Set. That makes them very much compatible with SCSI ...on certain abstraction layer. There's of course USB architecture below and the filesystem above, but right there what makes them mass storage and not, say, printers or webcams from the OS point of view, is SCSI. The OS sees them as "removable SCSI drives".

The SATA and SCSI protocols are similar

SAS is a next revision, extension of SCSI - THE new SCSI standard. And SAS supports SATA devices. Meaning that SATA, being a subset of SAS is a subset of nowadays SCSI. Even though SATA protocol is only -similar- to SCSI of the old, it is a part of -current- SCSI standard (SAS).

Re:SCSI? It just changed its face.

[stonecypher]

SCSI is faaaar from dead

Try to pay attention. They're saying the SCSI port is dead, not SCSI. Why? Because no SCSI connection has used anything but an SATA port for years.

ATAPI is SCSI over ATA

No, it isn't. It's EIDE/2.

SATA is SCSI over a special serial cable

... which should help you understand why the SCSI port is obsolete.

USB Storage (pendrives, external drives etc) are all SCSI.

Number one, no they aren't. Number two, that has nothing to do with the SCSI port.

Essentially mostly every mass storage device you connect to the computer is SCSI nowadays.

Not only do you live in a fantasy world, but you don't seem to understand that the phrases "The SCSI port is dead" and "SCSI is dead" aren't even close to exchangeable. Every example you gave, all of which were wrong, were SCSI over a not-SCSI port.

Your logic is fail.

Re:SCSI? It just changed its face.

[asuffield]

They support SCSI Primary Command (SPC) Set and SCSI Block Command (SBC) Set. That makes them very much compatible with SCSI

No. It means that they copied a chunk of text out of the SCSI spec because it was as good a way as any. SCSI is a whole lot more than just the parts they copied, and they added some stuff of their own. USB mass storage devices are not compatible with SCSI in any way.

The OS sees them as "removable SCSI drives"

You're thinking of Linux, and that was purely a design decision based on the relative cruftiness of different parts of the kernel. It has nothing to do with the underlying protocol.

And SAS supports SATA devices.

No. They have the same connectors and you can build a multi-mode controller that accepts either, but the wire protocol and even line voltages are different. If you plug an SATA drive into a regular SAS controller then it will flag an error and do nothing.

Meaning that SATA, being a subset of SAS

No. SATA is not a subset of SCSI. SATA has features that SCSI does not. SCSI has features that SATA does not. They have very little in common except that the protocols look vaguely similar.

Even though SATA protocol is only -similar- to SCSI of the old, it is a part of -current- SCSI standard (SAS)

The SATA protocol is specified by SATA-IO. The SCSI protocol is specified by INCITS. They are completely different organisations, and the documents that specify them are entirely separate. The only thing they really have in common is the connectors and cabling.

Please don't just make stuff up. You could have learned all of this from Wikipedia if you had bothered.

Re:SCSI? It just changed its face.

[jimicus]

No. They have the same connectors and you can build a multi-mode controller that accepts either, but the wire protocol and even line voltages are different. If you plug an SATA drive into a regular SAS controller then it will flag an error and do nothing.

Then your controller is faulty. Part of the SAS specification is that you can plug SATA drives into the controller and they work.

Note that this doesn't work the other way around.

Please don't just make stuff up. You could have learned all of this from Wikipedia if you had bothered.

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_ATA#Features

Re:modem port?

[compro01]

if you think dial up modems are obsolete, you evidently have never lived in a rural area in north america.

Why is Kryten's groin on the list?

[jameskojiro]

He is going to built in the future, he is like totally super advanced by today's standards. Can a USB port whisk an omelette? NO! Can a SATA port trim a hedge? NO! Can a PCI-Express port vaccum off the sofa? NO!!!!

If you want a port that can interface with anything and do almost anything and plug into almost any sort of appliance, just ask Kryten to dry hump it and your wish will be fulfilled!

LPT port *sigh* oh them good ol' days

[beckerist]

My FIRST "networked environment:" Two computers, a bi-directional crossover LPT cable and some REALLY crappy Novell software. Definitely some frustrating times just to play Warcraft I against a single friend!

FCC mandate

[Chris Snook]

Firewire is certainly more niche than USB, but in its niche, it's very good. That may be why the FCC has mandated that hi-def digital cable providers in the United States provide firewire-equipped cable boxes to any customers that ask for them. If you're doing media capture, it's really an excellent interface. If you want to plug in general purpose peripherals, USB is usually a better fit.

Re:FCC mandate

[m85476585]

But good luck using the firewire port. I have a Comcast DVR, and it was a huge pain to get video off it.

1. Drivers came from a random third party website, and they are not that great. There are no drivers from Comcast or Motorola (the manufacturer).
2. Recorded TV had to be played in realtime
3. The output was a .TS file, and I had a hard time finding free programs that could convert it to standard mpg files.
4. If I fast-forwarded while copying a recording, the output file would not play

They also have 2 USB ports, an eithernet port, and an eSATA port on the back, all of which are disabled by firmware. From what I have read, the hard drive uses a nonstandard file system, so I can't take it out and copy everything that way.

Missing option

[hcdejong]

ADB. It was brilliant in its day, better than USB in some areas, e.g. it included the ability to switch your computer on/off from the keyboard.
Also, Apple made a habit of including ADB ports in its monitors, so you could plug your keyboard and mouse into the monitor. Pity that never caught on either.

Anyone ever rip a running scsi drive out?

[Neil Blender]

If you ever get the chance, pull a running scsi drive out of a computer. Hold it your hand and try rotating your wrist. Very nice angular momentum demonstration. The platters are spinning so fast the drive will counter your wrist rotation quite forcibly.

Re:Anyone ever rip a running scsi drive out?

[OrangeTide]

... and that is the last time Neil was allowed at the data center.

Re:Anyone ever rip a running scsi drive out?

[Neil Blender]

Nah. I came across that when I was tasked with turning 50 busted servers into as many working servers as possible. That was when I learned about durability and the fact that processors could be hammered into wood beams quite nicely. The pins are like little nails. I had a nice little column of pentiums.

No Centronics or RS232.

[starling]

Where's the love?

Last night a Firewire saved my life in a disco

[theolein]

Actually, it was this morning. I had trashed a colleague's external drive, and along with it 100GB of data. In a flat panic, I hauled my Firewire 800 RAID enclosure from Lacie, and together with the totally amazing Data Rescue II from Prosoft, I had almost all of his data back back by Lunch today. The sheer speed of a Firewire 800 drive compared to a USB 2.0 drive made it all worth the while. USB simply doesn't compare in terms of reliability and speed.

Re:Last night a Firewire saved my life in a disco

[Swampash]

In my experience (and I use both interfaces quite a bit) USB 2.0 doesn't compare in terms of reliability and speed with Firewire 400.

Seriously, since Sata does SCSI have any benefits

[rolfwind]

anymore? I know the drives are built better but that comes with the price premium.

Less CPU usage? (Although with multiple cores, I assume something like that too becomes less and less important.)

for nerds...

[nguy]

For nerds, it's obviously the "P" (male) and "V" (female) ports that are, for practical purposes, never used and hence obsolete.

I know, people like to make sure that their "P" port remains gleaming and in good shape by regularly polishing it, but, seriously, give it up guys.

Firewire dead?

[jdb2]

I don't think so. We already know about the upcoming 3.2GB/s standard, but there is more.
They plan on doubling the speed to 6.4GB/s -- google for S6400. Also, the new standard(s)
extend firwire so as to allow it to operate over other mediums, such as Ethernet, Coax, and Fiber.

Yes, Firewire looks really dead to me. No matter what country a Cnet editor comes from, he/she's
probably an idiot. (eg. why didn't they include 32-bit PCI?)


jdb2

mod parent insightful

[JamesRose]

I can't be the only one who found it poignant!

Re:Seriously, since Sata does SCSI have any benefi

[asuffield]

Vastly better performance on all counts, which matters when you're attaching fifty drives to your bus. Incidentally, the current generation is called SAS ("Serial-Attached SCSI") and uses the same connectors as SATA, running the SCSI wire protocol. Modern RAID cages will accept both SATA and SAS drives in the same bays.

Re:Seriously, since Sata does SCSI have any benefi

[kithrup]

Sure... SCSI gives you the ability to have more drives per controller. And if you don't have NCQ on the SATA drive, SCSI is going to be quite a bit faster (assuming roughly-equivalent data rates, of course -- not comparing SCSI-I to SATA here :)).

For most people, however, SATA is probably good enough. And USB for when they need some extra (but much slower) storage.

Server people, however still like SCSI. Even if it's Serial-Attached SCSI these days ;). (But a bunch of SATA drives in a FibreChannel RAID box is still a way to go.)

Re:Is PCMCIA really dead?

[Tamerz]

No, PCMCIA is not dead. New laptops come with ExpressCard slots which is a PCMCIA specification. It is not backwards compatible though, but I have seen adapters.

Re:modem port?

[BrentH]

Which is, considering there's about eight people living in rural north america, a very likely option.

obsolete

[G3ckoG33k]

Maybe I don't quite understand the word obsolete, but I thought that today dial up modems were obsolete regardless of where you live. A necessity perhaps, but outdated nonetheless. ;)

Re:obsolete

[Darinbob]

From the dictionary:

1 a: no longer in use or no longer useful. b: of a kind or style no longer current : old-fashioned. Dialup modems are not obsolete in the first sense at all. The second sense is entirely subjective. Fashion is always subjective.

Re:obsolete

[Bill, Shooter of Bul]

I realize this is slashdot and all, but I'm not really sure that dial up modems were really ever in fashion. Never really heard of a modem fashion show with models wearing modems for clothing. Thats not something that I would ever recommend. Internal modems do not good under garments make.

Re:A few more

[CSMatt]

VGA isn't dead. I see it all the time on modern laptops.

Re:Missing from List

[jmauro]

Hmm... I really like RS-232 and it's distant cousin RS-422. I still buy notebooks with at least one of those ports since the USB/RS-232 converters just don't cut it when your trying to connect to routers, switches, camera controllers, and other random devices which will never have USB ports, but always have a RS-232 port somewhere. Also the complete lack of drivers needed to connect to the devices with RS-232 gives them a big win over any of the silly usb whippersnapper upstarts.

Sega was NOT the first console with a CD drive!!!

[TavisJohn]

I had a TurboGrafx(16) with the CD Drive attachment well BEFORE Sega ever released their CD device!

Why does everyone continue to give Sega credit for the CD-Drive on consoles, when the TG(16) did it first!

Re:Seriously, since Sata does SCSI have any benefi

[stonecypher]

and uses the same connectors as SATA

... which is why SCSI ports are obsolete.

Article misssed the point of SCSI entirely

[damn_registrars]

While you can argue back and forth whether or not SCSI is still faster than SATA, and which has the better transfer rates in what situation, they really missed one of the biggest advantages of SCSI hardware:

MTBF

SCSI drives have generally had 10x higher MTBF ratings, which means a lot when you're installing a drive in a server that needs to run for five nines. Sure, the difference in access is great, but its really the longevity that counts. Your gaming box can cope with a drive that is only supposed to stand up to a year or two of usage - you'll need more storage for your porn by then anyways - but server hard drives need to be able to take a beating constantly, and longer.

That was why I was always willing to dish out the extra coin for SCSI drives for my servers back when I was an admin.

5200 RPM drives

[Nimey]

Hardly, ignoring that the author meant 5400 RPM. In the Windows 3.x days our IDE hard drives were 3600 RPM and didn't even use DMA or multi-sector reads. We thought we had it good because it'd take over 100 floppies to store the same amount of data.

You tell kids that nowadays, and they wouldn't believe you.

PCMCIA

[NotFamous]

PCMCIA is being replaced by ExpressCard, not USB. This was not a deep article.

Firewire Trumps USB2

[Joe Burnett]

IMHO, firewire is still the best for external disk storage, especially if you're using it for activities such as virtual machine images. Here's an article I authored when I was benchmarking Firewire against USB2 performance: http://www.joeburnett.net/2008/01/30/firewire-vs-usb2-performance-for-external-disk-storage/

Re:modem port?

[xSauronx]

gsm is pricey and no better than a modem (if that good) in some areas i worked for a wISP in kansas, and one customer put our gear on a tower he had to get our service, because he hated dial up and tried his cell provider...but their nearest high speed tower was 35 miles away and literally dial up speeds (if that) also, he didnt want satellite because of the lousy speed/latency (our equipment was the same price, but much faster) fwiw, i came across more than one mint condition windows 98 CD while i was there as well, belonging to systems with *original* windows installs. talk about being creeped out. it was like a time vortex.

Re:modem port?

[socsoc]

I know plenty of people who live somewhere between suburbia and rural who are only now beginning to receive cable(Internet, not TV) or DSL service availability to their homes. It's quite unfortunate, but there are service deprived pockets in populated areas.

Parallel Ports are still useful!!

[Ogi_UnixNut]

Am I the only one who still thinks parallel ports are useful? They are a great introduction to PC interfacing for electronics. I remember getting into electronics from software when I learned how to program the parallel port to light up some LED's.

Looking at it now, something that would have needed not much else than an old printer cable, LED's and some diodes now would require a micro controller for USB interfacing and a bunch of other components, not to mention added programming complexity. And all those "USB to Parallel port" devices only work with printers, and do not function like a real Parallel port at all. I guess you could argue that the Parallel ports have become a niche, but I would not say that they are obsolete just yet.

or

[commodoresloat]

or ever had to use your computer as a fax machine?

Am I the only one...

[afabbro]

...who saw the headline and though the article would be a list of ports like 23 (tcp) and 117 (uucp)?

RS232 still kicking strong....

[Junta]

RS232 is 'good enough' for text and therefore has remained the console of choice in the datacenter for many servers and any remotely serious networking equipment.

Any decent admin has to have at least a half-dozen serial cables and adapters to plug from arbitrary DB9, RJ45, RJ11, Mini-USB, and who knows what else form factors carrying nothing more than the RS232 signals in various random pinouts. Yes, I've even seen a USB form-factor that wasn't used for USB signalling.

Re:modem port?

[Kozz]

My in-laws live just a 10-minute drive from Oshkosh, WI, which happens to be a college town also. But where they're at, they can't get DSL and the only cable company doesn't provide service any closer than 2 miles away. His only option for TV programming is satellite dish, and for Internet -- you guessed it, dial-up (blech!). And these days, nobody in their right mind would pay the going rates for ISDN.

Re:modem port?

[couchslug]

Quite right. There are and will remain many gaps in broadband coverage. Also, price pushes many poor folks away from broadband and to dialup.

Another one: DB15

[Ralph Spoilsport]

For YEARS Apple refused to get on with the VGA thing, and Apple users had to pay a premium for a monitor that sported a DB15 port. Nasty. I still don't understand why they did that... there were Adaptor plugs for DB15 > VGA all over the place, and eventually Apple dumped DB15, about 10 years too late.

RS

Re:modem port?

[glitch23]

if you think dial up modems are obsolete, you evidently have never lived in a rural area in north america.

Obsolete does not necessarily mean that it is no longer in use at all. From dictionary.com:

1. no longer in general use; fallen into disuse

In the case of dial-up modems, they are just no longer in general use given the proliferation of DSL and cable modem service for the majority of the U.S. population.

a proper Lunch

[Tumbleweed]

since when has Lunch been a proper noun?

If what you eat for Lunch doesn't deserve a capital L, then you're eating the wrong food.

Re:modem port?

[Tuidjy]

Serial ports are not obsolete. I work at a company with quite a few million dollars
worth of CNC machine tools, robotic cells, and assembly lines, and all of the equipment
is controlled or updated through DB9 or DB25 serial ports. Yes, the modern stuff comes
with RJ45 (Ethernet) ports. But the serial is always there, and as usually there is one PC
per building controlling all the equipment, it's always the serial that gets used.

Furthermore, all the scanning equipment, and all the heavy duty label printers use
serial ports. Once again, we could buy USB ones, but we do not want to change anything
that we do not have to. So we keep buying RS232 scanners, modems, printers, you name it.

At least two of the plants next to ours are doing the same thing. Manufacturing in the
US is hurting. Changing for the sake of changing is not happening where I can see it.

Re:modem port?

[try_anything]

This joke shows ignorance. There are actually more people living in rural America than in urban areas. --

Use saferdomainsearch.com [saferdomainsearch.com] to safely search for domain availability.

Use google.com to safely search for accurate information about American demographics.

Re:PS/2 not obsolete

[mmyrfield]

I really want to shoot the guy that decided to make the ps/2 ports ROUND. Wonder how that management meeting went?
PHB: "So guys, we've built this thing for connecting mice and keyboards, now we just need to decide what shape to make the connectors... brainstorm?"
Mike from engineering: "Maybe we should make them trapezoidal so that they can easily be plugged without looking"
Bob from marketing: "You know what would make a great value-add? If it were shaped like a circle, because circles are the future. "
PHB: "Go on Bob, I like where this is going..."
Bob: "And if we make sure that it plugs in at the back of the computer so that you have to pull it out every time you want to plug/unplug it that would force people to see the cool-factor that we've incorporated into it!"
PHB: "I think we have a winner with that one Bob. Mike, you need to stop living in the past. Usability is for chumps."

reason why Apple had the different video connector

[slashbart]

When apple had this custom display connector, pc users were very often struggling just to get any kind of image on a monitor; it was a pain in the ass to figure out the correct frequencies.
The Apple connectors told the computer what kind of resolution and refresh frequency they needed (with simple wiring, no protocol whatsoever), so as usual, the Apples were plug-and-play, whereas the pc's were plug-and-fiddle and then plug-and-pray.

Then NEC invented the multisync monitor, which had as its main purpose to ease the hassles for pc's. This worked very well, the whole industry shifted, and the vga connector became a very useful standard, which was eventually also used by Apple.

Bart