What USB Has Replaced (And What it Hasn't) (arstechnica.co.uk)

An anonymous reader writes with a story at Ars Technica about the evolution thus far of USB as an enabling technology: Like all technology, USB has evolved over time. Despite being a 'Universal' Serial Bus, in its 18-or-so years on the market it has spawned multiple versions with different connection speeds and many, many types of cables. A casual search around the shelves by my desk shows that I've got at least 12 varieties, and that's not even counting serial and PS/2 adapters. What have you replaced with USB?

Comments

High speed comms

[sugar and acid]

The company I work for replaced a propriety fiber optic comms system designed in about 1998 with a straight usb 2 interface. Saves about 400 gbp per unit.....

Not replaced: serial and parallel ports.

[Anonymous Coward]

1. Serial ports, because you don't need a complex microcontroller and driver stack just to throw a few bytes between two machines.

2. Parallel ports, because sometimes you want some basic high/low monitoring on a few lines and you don't want some ridiculous custom peripheral just to do this.

Re:Not replaced: serial and parallel ports.

[Opportunist]

Yup, pretty much this.

It's trivial to implement a serial connection in a microcontroller. All you need is a level shifter like the dime-for-dozen MAX232 and you're set. For USB, this requires a lot more implementation overhead (not to mention getting a genuine UID if you want to ship it), and literally EVERYONE who has ever even dabbled in microcontroller programming knows how to deal with a MAX232. Pushing information down the serial line is like the Hello World of microcontroller tinkering.

That's why you can still get PCI-E serial controller rather cheaply. And, lo and behold, almost all of them contain some variant of the MAX232.

Re:Not replaced: serial and parallel ports.

[Anonymous Coward]

Or, just use an FT232 and connect your UART to an emulated serial port. Having a true hardware serial port is useful at times, but for micro-controllers an FT232 with a USB connection on one end and the uart on the other is usually easier...

Re:Not replaced: serial and parallel ports.

[AC-x]

My motherboard doesn't even have serial or parallel ports you insensitive clod!
 
... I suppose I could use one of these...

Re:Not replaced: serial and parallel ports.

[Anonymous Coward]

What's a MAX232? or a FT232? As compared to RS232

Re:Not replaced: serial and parallel ports.

[Anonymous Coward]

A MAX232 chip converts the +5V/0V of a uart (let's assume we're running at 5V) to the RS232 standard signal (-12V/+12V or thereabouts). In other words, it converts RS232 to TTL and back. A FT232 takes the TTL coming from a UART and presents itself to the system as a virtual USB serial port (it is thus a USB to UART converter).

Re:Not replaced: serial and parallel ports.

[dotancohen]

1. Serial ports, because you don't need a complex microcontroller and driver stack just to throw a few bytes between two machines.

The poster seems to not understand what the words "universal" and "bus" mean in "Universal Serial Bus". He has 12 different varieties of physical connectors, but they all use (different compatible versions of) that same bus protocol, so he can simply use an adapter to interconnect between them. His PS/2 "adapter" is unreliable, does not completely support either the PS/2 or USB protocols, and will not work with many high-draw PS/2 HID devices, such as the PS/2 Model M keyboards (Lexmark, then Unicomp). Rather, there is a 'standard' mapping of PS/2 connectors to USB that most USB controllers support, but that is a USB feature.

Re:Not replaced: serial and parallel ports.

[_merlin]

Serial ports are definitely still alive and well as a connection of last resort. All my network switches, rack mount servers etc. have a serial console port to help when you can't use the usual network administration interface. Professional desktops also tend to have serial ports allowing you to do initial setup of one of these devices without the need for a USB to serial adaptor.

Centronics-style parallel printer ports, on the other hand, really do seem to have disappeared. You'd be hard pressed to find a computer that includes one any more. They were always a bit troublesome, without good two-way speed negotiation, and with generally unreliable daisy-chaining of peripherals. Requiring thick cables and using unbalanced signals also contributed to poor reliability at higher speeds. It was nice for hobby projects to be able to get logic levels straight out of the connector, but they weren't the best interface for anything else.

Re:Not replaced: serial and parallel ports.

[SuricouRaven]

2. Doesn't work any more. Due to changes in how parallel ports are implimented now, you can't do line monitoring or bit-bang the output on all ports. It's one reason a lot of factories with CNC machines keep a few ancient PCs around to operate them.

Re:Not replaced: serial and parallel ports.

[mikael]

Don't get them on modern gaming laptops. No floppy disk drive either.

Re:Not replaced: serial and parallel ports.

[Anonymous Coward]

I beg to differ! Your mother has 3 parallel ports

Re:Not replaced: serial and parallel ports.

[Tony Isaac]

USB to Serial adapter

USB to Parallel adapter

So there's certainly no need to have an internal serial or parallel port in your computer, for the very rare applications that need one of these antiquated interfaces.

I would argue that USB has indeed replaced both of these technologies, because all the common peripherals that used to use these (modems, printers, UPSes, fax machines, scanners, external drives, game controllers) have either become obsolete themselves, or have adapted to use USB.

Re:Not replaced: serial and parallel ports.

[ZorinLynx]

Centronics parallel ports are something that I do not miss. Even slightly.

Before the USB era, pretty much every peripheral that needed a faster connection than serial but was too cheap to implement SCSI used a parallel port. Webcams (Connectix QuickCam was a famous one), Zip drives, laplink cables, etc... it was insane. Parallel ports provided no power, so these devices either required a power brick or stole power from the AT/PS2 keyboard interface.

When it worked, great! When it didn't, good luck getting it working. I always used to pay a little more for SCSI when it was available because it was faster and a million times more reliable.

Remember the Zip Drive Plus? It was a drive that could either do SCSI or Parallel on the same port. I like to think of it as the height of the clunky, kludge-filled world we had before USB.

If the personal computer market ever had a "savior", it would be USB. It was truly a dark time before that.

Re:Not replaced: serial and parallel ports.

[ZorinLynx]

This is true. USB parallel ports are only implemented far enough to get printers working. Pretty much nothing else from the dark ages will work.

Serial ports are a bit better, but still have compatibility issues because most of them just use TTL level (5 volt) signaling, whereas RS232 specified 12 volts. The better ones have voltage multipliers onboard that will provide the necessary higher voltages; if you want to hook up vintage terminals to your computer using a USB serial port, these are often required.

Re:Not replaced: serial and parallel ports.

[Anonymous Coward]

In practice, they're used in serial.

Re:Not replaced: serial and parallel ports.

[thegarbz]

and literally EVERYONE who has ever even dabbled in microcontroller programming knows how to deal with a MAX232

As someone who does dab in that stuff I have found it far easier to get a USB enabled microcontroller to work as a CDC serial device than to deal with the effort of making a hardware serial connection work. The choice is many modern microcontrollers comes down to: Grab standard software library off the net, send bytes. VS Add extra hardware for serial communications, along with extra board layout + extra cost of MAX232 + significant board space taken up by a DB9 connector, grab standard software library off the net, configure data rate, stop bits, parity etc for both ends, and then send bytes.

Bonus points if you want to actually do detection of devices on either end because then you need to setup additional comms lines to deal with the hardware handshaking of the protocol which also helpfully takes up some I/O lines on the microcontroller.

Yep don't miss that one bit.

Re:Not replaced: serial and parallel ports.

[SuricouRaven]

RS232 is worse than that: It specifies +-12V. It's the reason the power connector on your mainboard has a -12V rail.

Re:Not replaced: serial and parallel ports.

[ShanghaiBill]

A MAX232 chip converts the +5V/0V of a uart (let's assume we're running at 5V) to the RS232 standard signal (-12V/+12V or thereabouts).

It is also unnecessary 99.9% of the time. Nearly all RS232 devices and hosts will work just fine with TTL voltages (+5V/GND).

Re:Not replaced: serial and parallel ports.

[AaronW]

It's actually a lot easier. In our case our eval boards normally came with multiple serial ports. All we had to do was put on a FDT quad USB to RS232 chip. No custom UID required. With Linux it's just plug and play, plug it in and you've got your serial console, plus we can reliably run it at much higher baud rates up to 10Mbps.

Re:Not replaced: serial and parallel ports.

[AaronW]

Some USB to serial adapters are better than others. I've found that the real FDT-based ones tend to be the best. USB to parallel adapters tend to have problems. For example, I have some label printers and cannot talk to them with the USB to parallel adapters but they work fine with a real parallel adapter or a parallel network print server. They also don't work well for bit banging and have a high latency if they can work at all.

Re:Not replaced: serial and parallel ports.

[fisted]

Those adapters require a booted operating system. Just because there's no need you have ever heard of, doesn't mean there wasn't a reason for having a real serial port in a PC. And, frankly, most mainboard still have them. They'r just not exposed on the backside of the case.

Re:Not replaced: serial and parallel ports.

[Anonymous Coward]

I miss parallel ports. Not great, not particularly fast, but dead simple for interfacing with hardware for controlling motors/lights or whatever from a simple io operation.

Then again with modern oses you don't have access to ports at that level, so for anything post mid 90s there are better and easier ways :)

Re:Not replaced: serial and parallel ports.

[Anonymous Coward]

A MAX232 chip converts the +5V/0V of a uart (let's assume we're running at 5V) to the RS232 standard signal (-12V/+12V or thereabouts).

It is also unnecessary 99.9% of the time. Nearly all RS232 devices and hosts will work just fine with TTL voltages (+5V/GND).

au contraire mon frere

Re:Not replaced: serial and parallel ports.

[sjames]

It may be excessive in some sense, but USB serial has absolutely replaced serial ports on desktop and laptop machines. I can get all the serial ports I want by plugging in inexpensive USB serial devices. The microcontroller in the device may be excessive, but no more so than the glue logic for a PCI device would be just to transmit at 115,200 bpx MAX.

I agree completely on the parallel port. The only remaining use I have for a parallel port is as poor man's GPIO lines. Unfortunately, for reasons that elude me, the standard for USB parallel ports doesn't accommodate that at all.

Re:Not replaced: serial and parallel ports.

[Darinbob]

Yup, parallel ports were better for monitoring several lines than at actually transferring data.

Re:Not replaced: serial and parallel ports.

[Anonymous Coward]

I think one of the problems was that at least through XP, the generic CDC driver in Windows was crap.

Re:Not replaced: serial and parallel ports.

[Anonymous Coward]

I have an old EPROM burner that works off of the parallel port. But it can only use a genuine ISA-style LPT port. It will not work with a parallel port on a PCI card.

The other problem is that USB simply isn't fast enough to do the bit-bang stuff, even if there was an API for it. USB only communicates with a device once every millisecond at most.

For the times when you don't care about speed, and just need one or two lines (such as a cheap I2C master), you can sometimes use the modem control lines on a USB serial a port. But these days it's really better to just use a micro-controller board. Even a basic Arduino can communicate with a PC over a virtual serial port. You can tell it generally what you want to do, and let it do the bit-bang at high speed.

Re:Not replaced: serial and parallel ports.

[silas_moeckel]

Pin count since yea you can do serial over 1-2 pins USB needs only 2 and with those two you can program it, get debugging out, emulate a plethora of devices including ethernet all while getting 500ma at 5v.

Re:Not replaced: serial and parallel ports.

[Anonymous Coward]

> (different compatible versions of) that same bus protocol

I'd hazard a guess that you aren't very familiar with the inner workings of the USB protocol.

Re:Not replaced: serial and parallel ports.

[Anonymous Coward]

USB to parallel adapters typically only do the bare minimum to get most old printers/scanners or whatever to work - and require layers of drivers to do that. Which is all good, but true parallel ports could do other handy stuff for hardware interfacing that just isn't there.

Mind you, designing a modern system around the quirks of parallel port hardware is a remarkably silly thing to do.

Captcha: grandpa. Love it!

Re: Not replaced: serial and parallel ports.

[Miamicanes]

In theory, FTDI's USB-UART chips can bitbang... but AFAIK, no windows, Linux, or osx drivers have any kind of API for using it on a computer. You have to program the bare metal directly using a microcontroller. The catch is that due to the way USB modes work, the max usable rate is about 1 mbps... and that assumes a lockstep transfer of data AT 1mbps with fairly precise timing using isochronous mode. If you want to sample the pins at arbitrary rates, the max usable rate is about 1/64th of that (using "control" mode)... maybe less.

In theory, a FTDI chip capable of native USB3.0 with interrupts tied to an external clock line could probably bitbang SCSI-1, but AFAIK, they haven't made such a chip yet.

Re:Not replaced: serial and parallel ports.

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do thousands of dollars of network equipment use serial ports when $50 smart phones use USB?

It's pointless.

Re:Not replaced: serial and parallel ports.

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

And yo mama is SCSI.

Re:Not replaced: serial and parallel ports.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yea, but is the reverse true? If I put the -12V from my PC's serial port into a uC, I suspect it will die pretty quickly. I could clamp it with a diode to ground and a resistor, but then I'm adding a bunch of capacitance and non-linearity to the transmission line.

I usually use RS-485 and the ADM483/ADM485 transceiver chips in my projects, because I can multidrop them, so if I keep the protocol sensible (usually Modbus RTU), I can keep adding more devices to a port. Also specifically by using Modbus, I can buy cheap relay, sensor and servo modules off AliExpress and avoid wasted PCB layout time on prototypes. With the ADM485 you can run 5Mbaud from an FPGA to a decent RS485 PCI/PCIe card, which is useful for rapid prototyping of FPGA debug ports and dataloggers, and somewhat easier to implement than an Ethernet MAC.

Re:Not replaced: serial and parallel ports.

[Anonymous Coward]

As someone who does dab in that stuff I have found it far easier to get a USB enabled microcontroller to work as a CDC serial device than to deal with the effort of making a hardware serial connection work. The choice is many modern microcontrollers comes down to: Grab standard software library off the net, send bytes. VS Add extra hardware for serial communications, along with extra board layout + extra cost of MAX232 + significant board space taken up by a DB9 connector, grab standard software library off the net, configure data rate, stop bits, parity etc for both ends, and then send bytes.

You make that sound hard, but none of what you describe is hard. With USB do you not also need to add a USB socket, 24MHz crystal, download USB stack off net. if it's a debug port, you don't need to have a MAX232 or any extra components or a bulky DB9 connector. You just need a pin header and a TTL-Serial USB board that you can buy for under one dollar. And you don't need a software stack at all to do UART on either Atmega or MSP430, you set like two registers and it's good to go.

Re:Not replaced: serial and parallel ports.

[Anonymous Coward]

Your label printers are crap. Every single one of our label printers has a TCP server built into it.

Re:Not replaced: serial and parallel ports.

[Anonymous Coward]

Not if you have three guys.

Re:Not replaced: serial and parallel ports.

[bosef1]

You hope. It's mostly the largess of the controller manufacturers that let you get away with this. They could insist on strict RS232, and you'd be out of luck. Heck, 0V is explicitly in the center guardband of the RS232 signal.

But the real reason not to do this is because the whole point of the wide voltage swings in 232 is to help mitigate signal interference in the single-ended signaling that 232 uses. If you're running a longer signal cable in a noisy environment, you want every bit of protection the standard can muster.

And, if you must, there are several TTL to 232 voltage converters available, such as these
http://www.bb-elec.com/Products/Serial-Connectivity/Serial-Converters/TTL-Converters.aspx

Re:Not replaced: serial and parallel ports.

[Opportunist]

The point is that the serial port is very convenient for testing, and very easy, and with zero impact on the rest of the design, to remove for the finished product.

There are certain informations that you want to get for testing, but don't want your users to get for reverse engineering.

Re:Not replaced: serial and parallel ports.

[Anonymous Coward]

Because drivers.

Re:Not replaced: serial and parallel ports.

[_merlin]

Because you want to be able to walk up to the box and get a console without having to fuck around with drivers, functions, endpoints, pipes and the rest of the USB stack. Serial just works - bang bits at the right speed and you're in business. You can build a really simple, dumb serial device that acts as a terminal. USB doesn't have a universal way to talk to devices like that.

Re:Not replaced: serial and parallel ports.

[Anonymous Coward]

I've yet to find a USB serial adapter that works properly. Connect them to anything like a forecourt controller, and see what happens.

The reason USB parallel ports don't work is that they assume they'll be used for line printers, which is a protocol on top of parallel, and the default USB spec speaks "usb line printer (usblp)", not "usb parallel (parport)".

Re:Not replaced: serial and parallel ports.

[evilviper]

It is also unnecessary 99.9% of the time. Nearly all RS232 devices and hosts will work just fine with TTL voltages (+5V/GND).

I wish that were true, but it sure as hell isn't!

Sure, MANY devices accept TTL voltage RS232, but a big number DO NOT. So if you depend on that USB-RS232 adapter, you'll be left standing around, looking like a moron.

Just had to configure a brand new smart PDU a while ago... Absolutely no activity to my company laptop via USB. Bad cable? Incorrect wiring? Defective PDU? Nope... Plugged that cable to a server with an actual RS232 port, and it works flawlessly.

I wish I could find USB-RS232 adapters that actually output the proper voltages...

Re:Not replaced: serial and parallel ports.

[sjames]

That's because most (but not all) USB serial devices use +5/0v rather than +/-12V. Most but unfortunately not all of them are tolerant of +-12V. By the same token, some 12V serial devices will communicate with a TTL serial port and some won't.

Going by spec, it's the TTL level port's fault if they don't communicate, but it's so common these days we might as well consider TTL the standard and 12V operation is a bonus.

The TTL level ports started showing up well before USB was a thing.

Just to make it worse, there are now 3.3V "serial" ports in the wild and some of them do not tolerate TTL levels! That's not good, but at least they are implemented only as header pins on the board and not a 9 pin D.

Re:Not replaced: serial and parallel ports.

[AmiMoJo]

It's more to do with the 12V coming in to your 3.6V max MCU. You can have some hacky protection like a current limiting resistor, a zener diode or just reply on the MCU's port protection, but you might as well just throw the MAX232 or equivalent in there and get proper level translations both ways. As well as protection and compatibility, you get the ability to use very long cables.

Re:Not replaced: serial and parallel ports.

[thegarbz]

My point is that you can do that with a lower part count and really simple software emulation that is easier to disable in a final product. The question is not if serial is useful. The question is why would someone design, pay for, and build the extra hardware; the obvious case of the USB already being in use not withstanding. But even then I have to wonder why use a separate channel for debugging info instead of just using software.

To be clear I am talking about serial emulation here. Throwing bits around on a UART is a fantastic way of debugging I fully agree. I just don't think it's worth the extra hassle and hardware to do it on the hardware level.

Re:Not replaced: serial and parallel ports.

[serviscope_minor]

You can buy PCIe parallel port cards for about 30 bucks, and a bit more for a what ever the heck the PCIe version of PCMCIA is called.

I bought a PCIe parallel port card when I wanted a small number of logic I/O lines. Much cheaper than a "proper" card and it even works on Linux with the ancient inb/outb instructions that you may remember from systems such as MSDOS.

You can bit bang it pretty fast too. And even without PREEMPT_RT, on a multicore machine, the jitter, latency and precision were remarkable for timing, just using basic sleep functions.

Anyway, you can bit bang them into the MHz happily.

Re:Not replaced: serial and parallel ports.

[arglebargle_xiv]

Some USB to serial adapters are better than others. I've found that the real FDT-based ones tend to be the best.

And Prolific, specifically the infinite variations of the PL2303 and its even more buggy clones, are the worst.

Re:Not replaced: serial and parallel ports.

[drinkypoo]

I wish I could find USB-RS232 adapters that actually output the proper voltages...

You piqued my curiosity, so I did that with google in three minutes. The device uses the FTDI FT231X USB to serial with the FTDI FT3243S serial level shifter and promises an output swing of maximum +/- 15V, with all I/O protected against ESD. You may paypal the beer money to my email address, above.

Re:Not replaced: serial and parallel ports.

[Anonymous Coward]

It is also unnecessary 99.9% of the time. Nearly all RS232 devices and hosts will work just fine with TTL voltages (+5V/GND).

Not quite true since you need inverters on the TTL lines for that to sort of work. A logical 0 for a serial port on a microcontroller is 0V and a logical 1 is 5V (assuming it runs on 5V) where a logical 0 on RS232 levels is +12V and a 1 is -12V. Using some 74HC logic will probably do the job but then a MAX is a far better solution.

Re:Not replaced: serial and parallel ports.

[Anonymous Coward]

That's why on your hardware board you just provide the pads and you use a probe adapter that has the needed RS232/USB/whatever converter you need that day to do your debugging.

Re:Not replaced: serial and parallel ports.

[Anonymous Coward]

For USB, this requires a lot more implementation overhead (not to mention getting a genuine UID if you want to ship it)

That is a bit of a myth. If you haven't signed with usb.org and don't use their trademarked logotype there is nothing illegal with making a USB-compatible device with whatever UID you want.
Getting a registered UID ensures that you won't get UID collision with certified USB devices, but it won't ensure that you won't collide with anyone who just decides to use a number.

It is a loophole I don't really mind since usb.org doesn't sell number series that are suitable for small developers or hobbyists and decided to take legal action against those who were willing to register a full span and split up.

Re:Not replaced: serial and parallel ports.

[Anonymuous Coward]

That may work for the serial port (if it actually includes a MAX232 voltage level converter, which is not guaranteed).

Not for the parallel port. Those usb-parallel adapters are actually emulating a USB printer -- they're absolutely worthless if you want to use them to bitbang microcontrollers and other such things.

In fact, they're absolutely worthless overall -- when did you last see a printer that doesn't support USB?

Re: Not replaced: serial and parallel ports.

[Anonymous Coward]

Shame you're not topically relevant. Posting at -1 isn't going to get you much traffic either, especially as you haven't linkified your URL.

Re:Not replaced: serial and parallel ports.

[AC-x]

Not for the parallel port. Those usb-parallel adapters are actually emulating a USB printer -- they're absolutely worthless if you want to use them to bitbang microcontrollers and other such things.

Wait, how does that work? Surely it must be passing through raw parallel data or the printer's own drivers wouldn't work.

Re:Not replaced: serial and parallel ports.

[Camel Pilot]

No the voltages are inverted

https://www.sparkfun.com/tutor...

Re:Not replaced: serial and parallel ports.

[AK Marc]

You could be like the idiot IT manager at my last job. He believed in standardization, and wanted his staff to have a serial port, so he required a really expensive desktop replacement laptop for everyone in the company, just so his IT team would have a serial port, and there'd be only one computer for everyone in the company for support.

Re: Not replaced: serial and parallel ports.

[pev]

Sure - but do any of the FTDI interfaces properly support serial break yet? Annoying as ****

Re:Not replaced: serial and parallel ports.

[_merlin]

What? I have a Dell Precision T3610 as my workstation which has a serial port, which happens to be convenient for pre-configuring network switches before deploying them. I also use it to get stuff on and off my old HP49G calculator. I'd use a USB adaptor if I didn't have a built-in serial port.

Re:Not replaced: serial and parallel ports.

[LinuxIsGarbage]

USB-LPT adapters are essentially a one way data stream to the printer. driver software can use it just as it can use a generic one way data stream to the same printer on an Ethernet server.

Most method of bit banging on parallel port relies on being able to use hardware IRQ interrupts (which USB can't do). That's because they are really abusing how a parallel port works, and not just using it as a one way data stream. This is also true for software like Laplink or FastLynx that allow for incoming data over a parallel port. An LPT cable has 8 outbound data bits, but the incoming bits are really supposed to be status bits (out of paper, busy, etc) that are abused to allow incoming data.

Interestingly USB-LPT adapters require no 3rd party drivers on Windows, however unlike mass storage, somehow serial ports did not receive the same treatment, so you're stuck loading Prolific PL2303, HL340, or FTDI drivers (and hope that you don't have a fake FTDI device that the drivers brick the firmware, or a version of PL2303 that Prolific decided to remove support for your OS).

I was also interested to find my Haswell based system included a pin header for Serial and Parallel on the motherboard. I just needed a riser.

FastLynx is an interesting program to interface with old computers. You can interoperate from DOS through to Windows 10 on serial and parallel. It can send the application via serial to allow the remote DOS PC to be able to send and recieve over serial or parallel. Useful if you have broken / no floppy capability and need to exchange data with old machines.

Re:Not replaced: serial and parallel ports.

[AK Marc]

The USB serial adapters work fine for doing stuff like that. But for getting one in a laptop, the costs are higher and specs lower, at least what the moron IT manager picked. An HP workstation laptop, no I don't remember the model. I just used my personal laptop for work, at 3 years old, it cost half the one he picked (when new) and was much better (faster, more memory and storage, better screen and graphics, etc.).

All to get a serial port in a laptop.

Re:Not replaced: serial and parallel ports.

[_merlin]

Yeah, if I'm walking up to a rack I'll just take my MBP and a USB-serial adaptor. I wouldn't buy a notebook just for having a serial port.

Re:Not replaced: serial and parallel ports.

[Anonymous Coward]

Serial IS nice in that it's a simple, dumb way to get a terminal interface. It's NOT nice inasmuch as there's umpteen different ways to configure it. Unless you get the right baud, bits, partity and stop bits right, all you get out is junk. Now, it IS true that most people have standardised on 8e1, but you've still got to guess the baud rate.

I would love to see some sort of amendment to RS232 whereby two devices can negotiate communications parameters.

Re: Not replaced: serial and parallel ports.

[Anonymous Coward]

True for many newer rs232 implementations, but if you're dealing with old school rs-232c (the c is important in this case) you'll have trouble with TTL levels.

Re: Not replaced: serial and parallel ports.

[Anonymous Coward]

I've had to implement hardware handshaking exactly 0 times for a microcontroller. 9600bps really isnt that much of a strain on modern microcontrollers.

Re: Not replaced: serial and parallel ports.

[Anonymous Coward]

Centronics printer interfaces were never daisy chained that i'm aware of. Are you sure you aren't thinking of scsi-1? Similar connector, but 50 pins.

Re: Not replaced: serial and parallel ports.

[Anonymous Coward]

Except most of the USB to serial devices use non-standard levels and dont work with strictly compliant hardware. My router doesn't have a USB port, it has a serial console interface. USB sucks.

Re:Not replaced: serial and parallel ports.

[Anonymous Coward]

Servers. You are talking about servers. In userland serial ports have disappeared, and I mean completely.

By definition the server use-case is a corner case.

Re:Not replaced: serial and parallel ports.

[Anonymous Coward]

And then you have to fuck around with gender changers and DIP switches to get the connector wired right if it's not a bit of gear you deal with all the time. It's not worth it, USB is a better choice.

Re:Not replaced: serial and parallel ports.

[Anonymuous Coward]

Most method of bit banging on parallel port relies on being able to use hardware IRQ interrupts (which USB can't do). That's because they are really abusing how a parallel port works, and not just using it as a one way data stream.

It's not only that. Those adapters won't update the data pins with new data unless the BUSY line is pulled high then low, with some time constraints, as specified by the Centronics protocol. That means that you can't use it to drive relays, leds, etc just by writing data to a port, as you could with a classic parallel port on 0x378.

or a version of PL2303 that Prolific decided to remove support for your OS).

Use linux. It supports without problem whatever cheap pl2303 knockoff you put into it. It's also easy to hack the driver to leave the dtr/rts lines alone (instead of pulling them high on reset), so you could use them independently via ioctls.

Re:Not replaced: serial and parallel ports.

[Anonymuous Coward]

Those printer drivers were working at a higher level, they only cared about some port where to send their data, they didn't do the low level centronics protocol themselves.

You could even save that data to a file instead of sending it to the printer; if you then cat that_file > /dev/lp0 on linux it would print it just fine.

Re: Not replaced: serial and parallel ports.

[_merlin]

It wasn't designed to be daisy-chained, but some peripherals like scanners and Zip drives provided pass-through functionality. They would attempt to detect when they were being addressed by the driver and pass other traffic through to/from a printer attached to the daisy chain port. It often worked unreliably, and parallel port storage devices always had poor performance. Parallel SCSI was designed as a daisy-chain bus and worked fairly reliably as long as you used good cables and terminated it properly.

Re:Not replaced: serial and parallel ports.

[Agripa]

It is also unnecessary 99.9% of the time. Nearly all RS232 devices and hosts will work just fine with TTL voltages (+5V/GND).

The problem is that RS-232 defines a minimum voltage swing of +/-3 volts and anything within that range undefined. That some level shifters work with TTL levels, which incidentally are *not* +5V and ground but more like +0.8 and +2.2 volts worst case, is more an of accident; some level shifters were deliberately designed to operate with an open input which would be encountered with a cable that does not carry optional pins like for handshaking.

It gets worse when products specify RS-232 "compliant" signalling but have a non-inverted output. That would make for fine TTL or CMOS levels to communicate with another sort of RS-232 device but now a standard level shifter cannot be used to make it truely RS-232 because they are all inverting. Either an inverter before the level shifter is needed or a custom non-inverting level shifter which is what I normally whip up out of discrete parts. And note that they have to go to extra lengths to make this screw up; they have to add an inverter in place of a level shifter at the UART output.

it's a shame hardware hasn't caught up

[Anonymous Coward]

It's very annoying when hardware manufacturers remove standard, well-established ports just because they're included an USB one. More often than not, the USB functions require special software that only runs on Windows.

Re:it's a shame hardware hasn't caught up

[Anonymous Coward]

"Software is cheaper than hardware" - Woz

Re:it's a shame hardware hasn't caught up

[Anonymous Coward]

So give me the controller software, then.

Oh, what? That doesn't mean anything in response to the OP's point? WHY THE HELL SAY IT, THEN?

Re:it's a shame hardware hasn't caught up

[mikael]

Hardware requires development environments, software simulators, FPGA units, tape-out, ASIC manufacturing, prototype hardware, firmware, custom firmware compilers, device drivers, official vendor approval and testing (Microsoft, Google, Apple), technical documentation and distribution.

Software requires a development environment, official vendor approval and testing (Microsoft, Google, Apple), technical documentation and distribution.

Pretty much everything

[Todd Knarr]

USB's been the connector of choice for most of my peripherals. It replaced the floppy drive connector for portable media. It replaced dedicated connectors for keyboards, mice, tablets and the like. My headsets are almost always USB, whether they're wired or wireless. Webcams. The only things I don't use it for are primary networking (hardwired Ethernet there), non-portable mass storage (hard drives and optical drives), and video. Sometimes I still use the PS/2 keyboard connector for non-Windows UEFI systems where a USB keyboard won't get initialized during POST. It's fast enough, there's typically more than enough connectors (especially with a hub for non-latency-sensitive devices), and it's almost universally present and usable.

Re:Pretty much everything

[Anonymous Coward]

It also replaced the game port - a single DA-15 connector that was pinned for two joysticks. What a joy that one was.

Re:Pretty much everything

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, and the parallel port, usually used for printers, but it did provide a nice I/O for electronics. Wish that one was still extant, but then again, Arduino clones are cheap.

Re:Pretty much everything

[Todd Knarr]

Hmm. My motherboard (Asrock X99 WS-E) has 3x SGPIO connectors, shouldn't be that hard to find a board that'd convert that into digital or analog I/O lines... yeah, the MAX72408 looks like overkill if you could find it as a basic kit instead of a bare chip.

Re:Pretty much everything

[Anonymous Coward]

It also replaced the game port - a single DA-15 connector that was pinned for two joysticks. What a joy that one was.

The USB variant of MIDI interfaces were pretty crap when it came to timing sensitive operations such as system exclusive message interchanging. I still rely on using my good old 8port SE which operates on a parallel interface and handles everything musical that I can throw at it. The USB midi interfaces work fine for punching notes into a computer from a cheap keyboard, however when I want to do things like a standard midi sample dump (which I tend not to do) or more often backing up settings and sound presets from my synthesizers, I rely on the parallel port and the 8 port se. I have been considering rolling up a couple of arduino experiments to see if I can iron out the timing problems, but it is not high on my list as I already have a monolithic monster that still works.

Re: Pretty much everything

[Anonymous Coward]

I still use a PS/2 keyboard port. USB can't handle more than 5-6 keys at the same time, I think? Doesn't matter how fancy an anti-ghosting keyboard you have, if you're the sort of idiot who needs to be able to press ten random keys at the same time, USB won't do the job.

Re: Pretty much everything

[mark-t]

I have this terrible feeling that I'm probably going to regret asking this, but why do you need to press 10 keys at once?

Re: Pretty much everything

[Anonymous Coward]

I have this terrible feeling that I'm probably going to regret asking this, but why do you need to press 10 keys at once?

My son likes to both move and shoot during his FPS games. In real life he is not a great shot with a rifle, even when laying still (but he is still better than me).

Re: Pretty much everything

[mark-t]

Why should moving and shooting require 10 keys to be pressed? Even key-chording generally does not typically involve more than 2 or 3 keys to be pressed simultaneously.... so doing that simultaneously with both hands might cause a need for up to 6 keys to be pressed at once. Anything beyond that and you are probably moving outside of the key combinations that can actually be pressed by a majority of people reliably enough to serve as functional controls.

Re: Pretty much everything

[yourlord]

Back when I used to play Descent 2 daily, I played exclusively with my old AT keyboard (which I still use with adapters) because it would reliably allow me to press more keys simultaneously than any ps2 or usb keyboard I've ever found.

Moving forward, rolling, pitching, strafing, firing primary, firing secondary, and running afterburners all at the same time was something I did more often than you would expect. That's 7 simultaneous keys. Most keyboards limit to 3 to 6, and often they are zoned so that only 2 or 3 in a local area of the board at a time can be pressed.

Re:Pretty much everything

[Feral Nerd]

USB's been the connector of choice for most of my peripherals. It replaced the floppy drive connector for portable media. It replaced dedicated connectors for keyboards, mice, tablets and the like. My headsets are almost always USB, whether they're wired or wireless. Webcams. The only things I don't use it for are primary networking (hardwired Ethernet there), non-portable mass storage (hard drives and optical drives), and video. Sometimes I still use the PS/2 keyboard connector for non-Windows UEFI systems where a USB keyboard won't get initialized during POST. It's fast enough, there's typically more than enough connectors (especially with a hub for non-latency-sensitive devices), and it's almost universally present and usable.

That still does not make it particularly good just ubiquitous. It took forever to come up with USB 3, the speed was not exactly blistering compared to competitors and the connectors are still clumsy and unnecessarily bulky.

Re: Pretty much everything

[Anonymous Coward]

(Not the same coward)
Shift+W+S+Space+Ctrl+R+F Or something around that has happened to me in game-play. It's not 10 keys, but it is above the 6 that USB can normally support which is all that matters.

What I was trying to do is sprint diagonally, initiate a jump+crouch, reload my gun, and talk to my team at the same time. In all technicality I could have stopped sprinting (-Shift) after jumping and before reloading, but that just adds another layer of complexity to the whole thing.

It isn't something that comes up commonly, but yeah, it definitely happens that a gamer (at least in some action games) will need to press more than 6 keys at once.

Re: Pretty much everything

[Anonymous Coward]

UPDATE: Actually that works with the 6kro limit since the Shift and Ctrl keys are handled differently somehow as "modifier" keys. So yeah, can't imagine going above 6 keys now.

Re: Pretty much everything

[Anonymous Coward]

It's incredible how something I started explaining to other people in the 90s still holds true:

What really pushes computers to the edge of their power is gaming.

That's apart from very niche specialized scientific work, and maybe Hollywood CGI.

99% of what a PC is used in a workplace could be done with a Commodore 64.

Re:Pretty much everything

[owlstead]

I was looking in vain for my ethernet port for my Lenovo Yoga 3 laptop lately. Very nice price for a good IPS touch display, WiFi AC, backlit keyboard, Samsung SSD, i7 and 8.6 GB of RAM. But when my cable internet provider asked me to test the connection I was searching in vain for my ethernet port. I never even imagined that such a machine comes without ethernet support. Fortunately the USB 3 ethernet connector of Lenovo is pretty cheap and works amazingly well. As you still need the ethernet cable I'm not sure that USB-3 has replaced it, but it certainly replaced the port on the laptop.

Re: Pretty much everything

[CastrTroy]

Yeah, you basically needed a joystick to play Descent. I loved that game. Can't wait for the new one to come out.

Re:Pretty much everything

[unixisc]

Things it has

1. Dedicated ports for keyboards, mice

2. Floppies and CDs - USBs have totally made them obsolete. Only DVDs and Blu-Rays are still around, but once flash memory catches up to them in $$/GB, that will go as well

3. Firewire ports on camcorders, once USB 3 became widespread

Things it hasn't

1. Internal hard disks. This interface, fast as it is, is too slow for either HDDs or SSDs that are internal

2. Headsets - I don't see the speaker or mic jacks going away anytime soon

3. Bluetooth - Wireless USB still hasn't caught on

Re:Pretty much everything

[Anonymous Coward]

I can burn a DVD from .iso faster than I can do it w/ unetbootin. When you're testing bootup & install several times a day, that makes a difference.

I do use an external USB DVD drive though.

Re: Pretty much everything

[Anonymous Coward]

Games. USB can only handle 8 modifier keys plus 6 regular keys in the standard format that is required by BIOS during boot time. After boot, they need to be told to switch to a different format that can return more keys. But that isn't even the whole story, because unless every key has a diode on it, ghosting means that some combinations of three keys appear to have a 4th key pressed.

The other reason to use PS/2 is that the keyboard interrupts the computer when a key is ready. USB has to be polled, and inherently it can poll no faster than once per millisecond. In fact, the standard keyboard message is limited in size because at the slowest USB data speed, it takes up most of the millisecond time slot. Usually keyboards get polled every 10 milliseconds by default, because it may have to share the port with other devices. If your screen adds another 10ms and the network adds a few dozen more ms, it starts adding up.

Re: Pretty much everything

[Anonymous Coward]

3 keys.

Re:Pretty much everything

[jtayon]

Since I have USB my motherboard greats me with

hello!

You have 3 keyboards,
2 mice,
2 sound cards,
3 drives we don't know how to call,

And I look, in fact I just have a mouse and a keyboard, that compared to PS/2 (I used to play ranked CTF in urban terror) ARE SO SLOW!!!!!

Remove this bus, remove this lag, I want a computer with 4 cores at 3 Ghz to stop having 200ms ground lag because of all the bloatwares like USB, HDMI ...

I want moar speed... I want stuff that works, not wireless shits that goes out of juice in a middle of a competition because you use them.
   

Re: Pretty much everything

[Anonymous Coward]

Dual joysticks is even better. But I reached Descent nirvana using a spaceball.
Old school one btw. RS232, and leeched power off the rts/cts pins IRRC. Still have them for robotics applications.

Re: Pretty much everything

[hcs_$reboot]

Probably he/she doesn't know that to enter a word, he/she may release a key before pressing the next one.

Re: Pretty much everything

[thegarbz]

How else do you let your computer know that you're really really angry?

Re: Pretty much everything

[drinkypoo]

Dual joysticks is a seriously underrated input mechanism. If you think it's good for descent, you'll go bananas for it in Mechwarrior. I think a twisty stick plus keyboard is great for descent.

Re: Pretty much everything

[Maxwell'sSilverLART]

I have this terrible feeling that I'm probably going to regret asking this, but why do you need to press 10 keys at once?

In a word: EMACS.

Re: Pretty much everything

[Anonymous Coward]

dude, use the mouse. Much more precise targeting. Makes the fusion cannon viable (in d1, in d2 fusion cannon sucks).

Re: Pretty much everything

[yourlord]

Not true. As I said I played with only a keyboard. I used to go to LAN cafe's (that dates me a bit) and would challenge people who brought in flight sticks and throttle controllers to a kill limit in Descent. With them using their hundreds of dollars worth of controllers and me with a $10 keyboard, I'd usually win. One time the guy running one local cafe didn't believe I could beat him with just a keyboard. He bet me my entire night for free if I won and I'd have to pay double the rate if he won. I got the entire night for free

Re: Pretty much everything

[Todd Knarr]

Gaming. It's not so much that you need to press 10 keys at once as that between fast typing and keyboard hardware macros you can wind up overlapping keystrokes. If you don't game high-end content you probably underestimate how much involves repeated sequences and how fast you can get when it's down to muscle memory rather than conscious typing. On a USB keyboard that results in lost keys and missed commands.

Re: Pretty much everything

[AK Marc]

I've played 2-player one-keyboard. Player 1 using 4-keys WASD style for movement, another 4 for view, 2-4 for weapons. moving forward right and looking back left requires holding 4 keys. Firing, one. 5x2 people is 10.

That's one case, I've also used games where you have 10 or more keys for abilities, and sometimes you want to mash buttons for all of them, clicking them as much/fast as you can without regard to order or precedence. But you want to hit them all. just because #10 is hit last, you don't want that keypress lost.

Re:Pretty much everything

[AK Marc]

When you have an interface that's universal, it has to be everything to all people. Low power, and no latency, two (of the many things) that are contradictory design goals.

Re: Pretty much everything

[Plumpaquatsch]

I have this terrible feeling that I'm probably going to regret asking this, but why do you need to press 10 keys at once?

He wants to find out if his cat walking over the keyboard is trying to tell him something.

Re: Pretty much everything

[Revarg]

So, as an avid gamer, i will be the first to tell you that there is rarely a 'need' for anything gamers do. However, there is an intense 'want' for any piece of hardware or software that makes us think our gaming rig is in any way better now than it was 5 minutes ago. This feeling extends from $350 graphics cards to $.50 stickers and everything in between.

Re: Pretty much everything

[PPalmgren]

A lot of people shift their key layout over now to allow more pinky keypress options rather than using modifiers. I can't adjust to do it, so I don't know the keys off the top of my head, but imagine your home row left hand where the index finger rests on H/J/K instead of F.

Displays

[ledow]

Displays.

You still don't use USB for displays.
And USB->HDMI peripherals are far from being the best gadgets - many of the cheap ones are basically unusable for anything more than a second screen of desktop icons.

Merge USB and HDMI and you have the ultimate connector.

Re:Displays

[Noah Haders]

like usb3?

Re:Displays

[AC-x]

You still don't use USB for displays.

You will soon...

Re:Displays

[silas_moeckel]

USB-C Because hell now your fixed display can power your laptop, for low res like 1080p you can even chain multiple ports together.

Re:Displays

[hvdh]

Well, one can do that. At my workplace, we've replaced all traditional docking stations in conference rooms with new generic USB3 ones. Previosly, there were two kinds of docking stations for Dell and one for HP laptops.
The USB3 "docking station" is connected with a single cable with a laptop, and provides 1080p HDMI output including sound to the big wall-mount monitor or projector, Ethernet and a few USB ports plus a connected mouse.
Display output is fine when using USB3. On USB2, it is ok for most things except for full-screen video.

Charger cables

[Anonymous Coward]

If USB had failed in every other way, just the universal use of USB for charging, particularly the micro USB plug and socket, would have been worth it.

Re:Charger cables

[Anonymous Coward]

The only reason this even remotely sounds good is because everybody has forgotten how fast proprietary chargers are.

Re:Charger cables

[mikael]

Those almost seemed to take off. I've only seen them in upmarket hotels:

http://www.hardwaresphere.com/...

Re:Charger cables

[thegarbz]

The only reason this even remotely sounds good is because everybody has forgotten how fast proprietary chargers are.

You mean how small in capacity old phones were?
Your run of the mill iPad charger pumps out far more juice than your old Nokia charger ever did. The connector on the end doesn't make a difference there.

Re:Charger cables

[LiENUS]

As compared to the old nokia charger which had a 850 mA limit?

Re:Charger cables

[timmyf2371]

I look forward to the day when I can have a single micro USB cable (or whatever the future version might look like) on my desk and in my bag.

I have a device that still uses mini USB, several using micro USB, and proprietary Pebble, Fitbit and iPhone chargers. Manageable when I'm at my desk if a little messy; more difficult when I'm travelling and either take a whole bunch of cables or just the most important (usually one lightning and one micro USB).

Re: Charger cables

[Anonymous Coward]

And that is the poster's point. Try charging your ipad from a standard USB port. Proprietary chargers for just about any device are higher current and therefore faster.

obvious and not-so-obvious answers

[davidwr]

The most obvious are the serial, parallel, and PS2 connectors used for mice, keyboards, printers, and the occasional device that in the past would have used some variant of the RS-232 serial port.

Less obvious is a reduced reliance on video connectors and special-purpose buses like PCMCIA, eSATA, and MIDI.

USB-based cabling has also replaced the old-school "Laplink" cable connectors for connecting two computers directly to each other, although Ethernet and WiFi long ago reduced the need for such connections.

Re:obvious and not-so-obvious answers

[Anonymous Coward]

The most obvious are the serial, parallel, and PS2 connectors used for mice, keyboards, printers, and the occasional device that in the past would have used some variant of the RS-232 serial port.

Less obvious is a reduced reliance on video connectors and special-purpose buses like PCMCIA, eSATA, and MIDI.

USB-based cabling has also replaced the old-school "Laplink" cable connectors for connecting two computers directly to each other, although Ethernet and WiFi long ago reduced the need for such connections.

On that last one, I was hoping that the chips for the lap link option would become cheap enough at a point to pull off a true fully connected mesh network cluster for beowulf clusters. Problem is that you would almost need USB 3 speeds for it to be worth doing. There is also a point of diminishing returns as the bus gets over-taxed the more interfaces you throw onto it. I was wanting to research whether having 6 machines with 5 interfaces each would give better throughput than a star configuration you would get just using gigabit ethernet. It depends on a lot of things, mostly the amount of network traffic in the application and likelihood of data collisions. Sometimes it is not ever a problem, sometimes it completely makes the system unworkable. (Depends on the application more than the footprint.)

I think it would be nice to have a USB 3 bus that has the ability to put a practical number of direct links between each machine to each other machine in the cluster but this gets unworkable very fast as each node added to the system multiplies the number of links needed per machine from every other machine - 1

so a hypothetical cluster of 6 machines would require 5 interfaces per node (one for each other system in the cluster) totaling 15 interfaces for 6 machines.
add one machine to the system and that number goes up to 6 interfaces per machine the total number of interfaces goes up to 21.
at a small number of machines it is not a big deal but it becomes unworkable in terms of cost and bandwidth rather quickly.

Re:obvious and not-so-obvious answers

[Anonymous Coward]

whats a beowulf cluster?

oh, its a cluster...so, a beowulf beowulf cluster is the same thing?

Re:obvious and not-so-obvious answers

[Anonymous Coward]

whats a beowulf cluster?

oh, its a cluster...so, a beowulf beowulf cluster is the same thing?

beowulf clusters are a type of multi-computing network architecture which allows computing resources to be shared on a network.

read up on it here

The proper way to refer to it would be as a beowulf cluster or just a cluster. What you say is analogous to how people refer to a network interface card (NIC) as a "NIC Card" which would be like you said.. a network interface card card. And no you would not refer to it as a Beowulf cluster cluster either. :)

Re:obvious and not-so-obvious answers

[DarkVader]

You must be new here.

Surprisingly little

[Anonymous Coward]

What have you replaced with USB?

Keyboard and mouse.
Scanner, though I didn't have a scanner prior to getting USB.
USB flash drives, though I rarely use those. They mainly replaced floppys or zip disks.

I went from SCSI to firewire to eSATA. USB for storage has always been considered a fallback.
Network printers have become so cheap that using one for just two computers is reasonable. At least that was my thinking for getting one at home.

I use a bunch of USB devices not mentioned here, but they didn't exist prior to the introduction of USB, which mean they never existed in a non-USB version and USB never replaced the interface. It's more like USB greatly expanded the available devices you can connect your computer to. If you asked what I have connected to the computer, which you didn't have prior to getting USB, then the answer would be totally different.

Enhanced, but not replaced.

[wjcofkc]

I use a PS/2 to USB adapter for my gigantic clickity clack circa 1991 mechanical keyboard. And I am very grateful for that ability. Thank you USB!

Re:Enhanced, but not replaced.

[sexconker]

USB for keyboard and mouse is trash compared to PS/2.
With PS/2 you get full rollover support and you don't have to wait for the CPU to poll for shit.

Re:Enhanced, but not replaced.

[wjcofkc]

I have no problem with rollover. It's a feature I frequently use. Also, my quad-core i7 does not seem to mind. Neither does a CPU from ten years ago. Beyond that CPUs exist so that they can, well... do shit.

Re:Enhanced, but not replaced.

[Anonymous Coward]

I use an AT to PS/2 adapter for my old keyboard. Fortunately, my motherboard still has PS/2 ports :-)

Re:Enhanced, but not replaced.

[wjcofkc]

I would mod this interesting if I could.

Re:Enhanced, but not replaced.

[Anonymous Coward]

Lots of folks don't notice this... in fact, I hardly notice this myself. The only time I actually notice a difference is when I'm gaming...

Re:Enhanced, but not replaced.

[SuricouRaven]

It depends on the keyboard, but full rollover is really only of use to gamers, so few give it any thought.

Re:Enhanced, but not replaced.

[serviscope_minor]

I use a PS/2 to USB adapter for my gigantic clickity clack circa 1991 mechanical keyboard.

Huh. I use a PS/2 adapter from my 1996 era keyboard, but I need a DIN to PS/2 adapter to get it to work. I distinctly remember my shiny new P133 not having a DIN port for the keyboard.

Re:Enhanced, but not replaced.

[Anonymous Coward]

USB for keyboard and mouse is trash compared to PS/2.

USB is also trash compared to Apple's ADB. MacOS prior to OSX was real realtime, which meant the application should hand the CPU back to the system and while this can be awesome at times, it also meant that a frozen application could decide not to hand back the CPU, which would freeze the entire system. When that happened, you hit a certain key combo, which made an interrupt and you had access to a command line. You would then write "g finder" and it would goto finder (or give the CPU time to finder).

The problem with this approach is that it depends on the interrupt. It always worked with ADB due to the very low level of implementation of ADB (hardware?). However USB had software drivers and they froze together with freezing applications, meaning the key combo for getting the command line only worked when you didn't have freezing problems. This meant that back in year 2000 the guy next to me got really fed up with his new USB keyboard because he had to borrow my ADB keyboard every time an application froze. The fact that he used one, which was less stable than average didn't help.

ADB however had a hardware limitation that you could not press more than 3 keys at once in addition to some modifier keys like shift. While normally ok, it turned out to be a horrible limitation when I (together with some other people) attached two keyboards to the same computer and then had multiplayer car racing turnament. It turned out that if one person changed speed up/down and turned at the same time (2 keys), the other could only change speed or turn, but not both at the same time because it only had a single key available in ADB. I don't think USB has such a limitation, or at least it isn't in the USB interface. However apart from the racing turnament incident, I don't think I have come across incidents where I needed to press more than 3 keys at once in addition to shift/control and those keys. It wasn't such a severe limitation for normal use.

Re:Enhanced, but not replaced.

[Xtifr]

Most motherboard PS/2 ports are actually PS/2->USB adapters these days. So you're very likely going AT->PS/2->USB. Which is fine if it works.

Re:Enhanced, but not replaced.

[Xtifr]

You should know that Unicomp, which bought the rights to the model M keyboard design (the original gigantic clacky PC keyboard), still makes true model Ms with a variety of connectors including USB. My aunt swears by them. They're not cheap, but as you have clearly noticed, they also last for ages. So if the one you have does give up the ghost, you've got options.

Re:Enhanced, but not replaced.

[wjcofkc]

I much appreciate this. These true old timers are getting hard to find.

Proprietary charging cables are devil's work

[sjbe]

The only reason this even remotely sounds good is because everybody has forgotten how fast proprietary chargers are.

As if that even remotely overcomes the deficiencies of proprietary charging cables. The fewer cable types we have to deal with the better. Power and data can and should go over the same cables. USB is imperfect but it's a huge improvement over what we used to do. Proprietary charging cables are wasteful, annoying, redundant, and unnecessary unitaskers. They are thinly veiled attempts at vendor lock in. I don't care how well they might work for the actual act of charging, they fail in every other way.

Now USB just needs to settle on a single un-keyed connector that can carry enough power to run a laptop and has enough speed to run a display. We're just about there.

Re:Proprietary charging cables are devil's work

[Culture20]

But with proprietary charging cables, you get he privilege of spending $20 on a spare or replacement charger for every device you own...

Re: Proprietary charging cables are devil's work

[Anonymous Coward]

OR, y'know, buy a hybrid charger cable or adapter.

They work very well and aren't all that expensive.
This plus general USB adapters for data, and power universal plug, solves many travel headaches!

Re:Proprietary charging cables are devil's work

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm using an Apple device you insensitive clod!

Instead of buying $5 USB cables I get to buy lightening cables from Apple for $20 that fail after a month of flexing. Or something else that may fail when Apple "upgrades" something. I miss the old proprietary Apple iPod cable that didn't break and would always work

Re:Proprietary charging cables are devil's work

[evilviper]

Power and data can and should go over the same cables.

We no longer need ANY CABLE for data. Your saddling yourself with restrictions to satisfy a long-lost need. And...

Proprietary charging cables are wasteful, annoying, redundant, and unnecessary

It's only where POWER and DATA go over the same cable that we end up with horrible proprietary crap! If phones had power-only cables, they'd have been simple, standard barrel connectors.

Now USB just needs to settle on a single un-keyed connector that can carry enough power to run a laptop

Laptops have had that forever... Their simple barrel connectors can pull 200W+, no trouble at all. And no USB connector will ever be 1/100th as durable as a tough, simple, basic barrel connector.

There's only ONE THING I give USB credit for... It sucked the air out of all the subtle variation of voltages around its range. Instead of devices that needed 3V, some that needed 6V, and others that needed 4.5V, and even with some that wanted 7.5V, now all those devices will have mini-USB plugs (usually not micro-usb), and run on 5V.

Of course if every smartphone charger on the planet switched to 12V, it would have the same effect on laptops, and all other devices that use any voltages anywhere around that range.

Re:Proprietary charging cables are devil's work

[DarkVader]

Why would you need 12V for it to work for laptops?

Oh, you don't. See: MacBook USB-C

I still prefer MagSafe connectors, though.

Re:Proprietary charging cables are devil's work

[evilviper]

Why would you need 12V for it to work for laptops?

Because at 5V you need to pull 3X as many amps over the wire to meet the power needs... Probably MORE, with conversion losses.

So, for a laptop that draws 90W (pretty common), at USB's 5V, that's over 20amps. Do you know what a USB cable that can supply 20amps will look like? Here's a hint: Those big long heavy orange $20+ extension cords are only rated for 15amps.

nothing that needs interrupts

[Gravis Zero]

USB does not have hardware interrupt lines, so USB is not used for anything critical... like your nervous system.

Re:nothing that needs interrupts

[angryargus]

USB 3 (AKA xhci) has interrupts. It was designed to reduce power consumption and reduce overhead to virtualize in a VM.

This parent article seems to be pretty poor when it asked what USB has replaced and most of the replies are about what USB hasn't yet replaced.

Re:nothing that needs interrupts

[Gravis Zero]

it doesn't have a hardware interrupt line, dummy. USB is based on polling.

Re:nothing that needs interrupts

[angryargus]

Earlier USBs involved cpu-based polling, but xhci is based on the host controller polling an then interrupting the CPU. Section 5.2.8 of the xchi spec defines the MSI and MSI-x capabilities, which would be missing and irrelevant if your assertion about no hardware interrupts was correct.

Re:nothing that needs interrupts

[Gravis Zero]

in other words, it's still based on polling, they have just offloaded the polling to the controller. it's still a protocol based interrupt system, not a hardware based interrupt system, even if you have a controller that translates it to one. perfect compliance with the spec is ideal but real life happens.

Video Production Hard Drives

[Anonymous Coward]

Still can't use it (even USB 3.1) for external drives if you want to do video production work. Need Firewire or Thunderbolt so as to not drop frames. It's a hardware level thing, too, so unless they want to break backward compatibility with USB devices this will not change.

Re:Video Production Hard Drives

[mark-t]

??? USB 3.1 is quite a bite faster than even firewire 800, and about the same speed as thunderbolt.

Re:Video Production Hard Drives

[megalomaniacs4u]

yeah but the protocol & multdevice screw with consistent transfer rate you need for video. For just about anything else usb3+ is fine.

Re:Video Production Hard Drives

[ihtoit]

Firewire uses 1 controller for one port. USB uses one controller for 4 ports. Contested bandwidth is the killer here. If you have a laptop with three USB and 1 firewire port, chances are you're going to see frame drops with USB because even if the other two ports aren't being used, you're still going to see latency caused by bus scanning.

I have a laptop with an internal 1394 I use for the camera and a PC Card firewire adapter I use for connnecting a hard drive. The ONLY thing the USB ports get used for are trackball, external sound card (I like the iMic, it pisses all over any internal soundcard I've ever tried), and occasionally a DVB-T dongle. I don't see ANY dropped frames.

Re:Video Production Hard Drives

[AK Marc]

Firewire uses 1 controller for one port. USB uses one controller for 4 ports.

I have 3 controllers for 4 USB ports in my computer. Two 2.0 on one controller, and one 3.0 controller each for the other two ports.

Use a 2.0 shared for HID or printer, and the 3.0 for one storage device each, or other high bandwidth/low latency devices.

Re:Video Production Hard Drives

[UnknowingFool]

I have 3 controllers for 4 USB ports in my computer. Two 2.0 on one controller, and one 3.0 controller each for the other two ports.

So what you are saying you only have 4 USB ports total? Or are you saying you only USE 4 USB ports. There's a difference between those two statements.

Use a 2.0 shared for HID or printer, and the 3.0 for one storage device each, or other high bandwidth/low latency devices.

Using a USB3.0 for storage devices is fine IF the transfer is not sensitive to timing. As noted above using it for video production is recommended. Using it to make periodic backups is fine.

Re:Video Production Hard Drives

[AK Marc]

So what you are saying you only have 4 USB ports total? Or are you saying you only USE 4 USB ports. There's a difference between those two statements.

I'm saying that my laptop has 4 USB ports, and 3 controllers for those 4 ports, so the statement "USB uses one controller for 4 ports." is simply 100% wrong. You can have hundreds of devices per controller, or one controller per port. Blaming the standard because you are too cheap to configure your hardware in the manner you like is silly.

Re:Video Production Hard Drives

[UnknowingFool]

A single controller has a max of 127 devices from what I remember. BUT that doesn't mean that it will work well with that many devices connected. The point he was trying to make though is that USB is at best mediocre for some applications. For most purposes, USB is fine to use.

Re:Video Production Hard Drives

[AK Marc]

USB uses one controller for 4 ports

I don't see how you are still defending that. I have a laptop with two 1:1 ports, and as you noted, there is a limit of 127 or so. If he doesn't want contested USB, then just plug in one device per controller, then there's no contested bandwidth.

I don't care about the color of his words, or what he was trying to say or his agenda or such. He made an obviously false statement of fact. That renders any opinion based on that irrelevant. If you can't get your facts in order, nobody should be listening to your opinion.

Re:Video Production Hard Drives

[UnknowingFool]

I don't see how you are still defending that.

I didn't. I clearly said the max number of devices is 127.

If he doesn't want contested USB, then just plug in one device per controller, then there's no contested bandwidth.

Being the only device on a controller will help but USB is still CPU bound.

I don't care about the color of his words, or what he was trying to say or his agenda or such. He made an obviously false statement of fact. That renders any opinion based on that irrelevant. If you can't get your facts in order, nobody should be listening to your opinion.

That's a rather strong statement. So you've never posted incorrect facts here on slashdot, before?

My PS/2 mouse connection.

[Anonymous Coward]

> What have you replaced with USB?

I use a USB mouse now, because that of that fricking PS/2 freeze problem!

And why would I want to use a PS/2 mouse? To free a USB port, duh! At least, the PS/2 keyboard works without a hitch.

On the brighter side, I found out that the eSATAp connector works as an extra USB port. Thus my 2 USB ports notebook actually has a third one. BTW, if you want to save USB ports:

1. Obviously get a good USB hub. There are powered ones, but I still didn't find one personally.
2. If you need to power conventional devices (lamps, fans/coolers etc.) use a phone USB charger connected to an electric outlet.
3. Use SD cards if your notebook can read them.
4. Network drives (samba, nfs etc.) might help, too, but they're not portable.
5. Use an eSATA external drive (though they seem to be expensive, so not really interesting).
6. Maybe there is some kind of wireless (RF? BT?) hub, but I haven't seen it yet...
7. Use another computer as input device (X can do that -- client/server and all that).

Re:My PS/2 mouse connection.

[unixisc]

Free up an USB port? You can have up to 127 USB devices on a USB network. So if you have a limited number of USB ports, the you can dedicate one to your mouse, and another can be connected to a USB hub that can then go to your printer and other things.

Re:My PS/2 mouse connection.

[Anonymous Coward]

> Free up an USB port? You can have up to 127 USB devices on a USB network. So if you have a limited number of USB ports, the you can dedicate one to your mouse, and another can be connected to a USB hub that can then go to your printer and other things.

Thanks for the info (not being sarcastic, this is really useful to me).

But I was trying to feed a keyboard, a mouse, a cooler under the notebook and a pen drive and the latter kept disappearing. Removed the fan/cooler and things went back to normal. I'm also booting the computer from an external HD on another USB port, so I imagine there's an excessive power drain (it's plugged in, not using a battery).

Re:My PS/2 mouse connection.

[unixisc]

Some devices must be connected to a 'root' USB port i.e. the main port. I have found that the keyboard and mouse fall in that category. The cooler fan can plug into a hub, but usually, it is more convenient to keep the cable short and connect it directly to the laptop. I think given what you are describing, it might be more convenient to have an active hub - one that requires its own power supply - to a passive one. Given an active hub, you may find it reading your USB stick just fine.

Re:My PS/2 mouse connection.

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks for taking the time to reply, it was very instructive.

This subject really has some aspects about which I knew nothing.

I haven't replaced serial ports...

[Mirar]

...I know I haven't managed to replace serial ports. I haven't found any stable RS232 converter on USB...

Either drivers don't work, or everything I get is badly made (fake?).

Kind of weird that *serial* ports don't work well on an *universal serial bus*. But ah well.

Re:I haven't replaced serial ports...

[Anonymous Coward]

"I know I haven't managed to replace serial ports"

well you should replace whatever crap uses them or leave it alone, its a 30yo connector, serial is slow, i'm surprised we don't have a strand of glass and power in a single cable and be done with all these connector "standard" mishmash, design a connector for the next 500 years and solve the problem.

Re:I haven't replaced serial ports...

[Anonymous Coward]

Try USBRS232 converters with real FTDI chips. There are fakes out there, but the real ones have excellent driver support and work reliably.

Re:I haven't replaced serial ports...

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a USB/RS232 adaptor (that Linux tells me is based on a PL2303 chip) that I use for basic serial communication (it provides a ~115kbps serial console between two of my machines, but it would presumably drive a POTS modem just fine). I purchased it from the local computer hardware store. Searching for that chip number on Newegg reveals a few potential candidates.

> Kind of weird that *serial* ports don't work well on an *universal serial bus*. But ah well.

It's not weird that a poorly manufactured USB device works poorly. :)

Re:I haven't replaced serial ports...

[Anonymous Coward]

...I know I haven't managed to replace serial ports. I haven't found any stable RS232 converter on USB...

Either drivers don't work, or everything I get is badly made (fake?).

Kind of weird that *serial* ports don't work well on an *universal serial bus*. But ah well.

Look for a decent FTDI chip. I can't remember the other big contender, but I have had fantastic luck with FTDI and legacy automation hardware.

Re:I haven't replaced serial ports...

[Anonymous Coward]

FWIW, old Keyspan adapters are awesome if you can find one. I think they even still provide working drivers for their really old models that are over 10 years old. They even had one with two mini-DIN-8 Macintosh serial ports. And they supposedly do support the break signal, which the cheap adapters don't. Other than that, get one with a genuine FTDI chip. (Easier said than done, the clones sometimes even mark their chips with the FTDI logo.)

Re:I haven't replaced serial ports...

[Anonymous Coward]

I have had great success with SiLabs USB-to-UART over a HID interface (CP2110). No drivers, just a two DLLs, which can be placed in the application directory and used in your program with static linking. You do NOT need the vitual COM port. Very fast, very simple, always seems to work. http://www.silabs.com/products/interface/usbtouart/Pages/default.aspx

I will admit that I didn't try them under Linux or OSX.

Now, what sucks about all USB-UARTs is the USB timing. I was using one in a project with 9600 baud, 8N1 and an old protocol, which required every character be echoed before the next one could be sent, in either direction. It basically came out to 1 character traveling over the wire per USB transaction. Since the character needed to be echoed, it took 2 transactions to send and echo one character. Something with took a small fraction of a minute, ended up taking multiple minutes. Luckily, this only had to happen once during production (EEPROM initialization) and never with the user.

Re:I haven't replaced serial ports...

[ihtoit]

oh is THAT what that board is?? I ripped out a PCI card with 4 mini-DIN8 ports from a knackered G3 some years ago, it's had me absolutely stumped as to what it's for!

Re:I haven't replaced serial ports...

[David_Hart]

...I know I haven't managed to replace serial ports. I haven't found any stable RS232 converter on USB...

Either drivers don't work, or everything I get is badly made (fake?).

Kind of weird that *serial* ports don't work well on an *universal serial bus*. But ah well.

I use C2G / Cables To Go 26886 serial adapters at work for console access to network switches and routers. They work great. Never had a problem.

Re:I haven't replaced serial ports...

[AmiMoJo]

There are a few issues with USB serial ports to be aware of.

1. The standard Windows driver is terrible. It locks up, can't handle unexpected disconnects and reconnects etc. In Windows 10 it is supposed to be better, but I have not tested it. The best option is to get an adapter that uses an FTDI chip. Yes, FTDI are evil, but their driver is pretty good.

2. Latency over USB is very different to latency on a real USB port. This has two effects.
2a. Stuff that relies on timing, such as GPS time sync, won't work very well.
2b. Signals can get out of order, e.g. the app sets DTR and then sends a character, but the port emits the character before setting DTR.

3. The cheap ones often have poor input protection, making them prone to premature death.

Re:I haven't replaced serial ports...

[thegarbz]

I think the original question wasn't about supporting legacy devices. What devices do you still use that require serial ports to exist on the PC? Pretty much everything these days has USB even if just to emulate a serial port via CDC.

Re:I haven't replaced serial ports...

[Anonymous Coward]

That's weird... With the odd exception where the $1 adapter from eBay is broken (sometimes in a weird way where bits get flipped - deterministically even), I haven't encountered a USB-to-RS232 adapter that failed to work. I did encounter serial ports on industrial-spec motherboards that failed to drive serial ports quite recently though. I had to use USB adapters even though I had 6 RS232 ports right there.

Re:I haven't replaced serial ports...

[Ash-Fox]

This USB serial port worked for me where others did not due to latency issues for timing sensitive software.

Re:I haven't replaced serial ports...

[Anonymous Coward]

Digi makes 1, 2, 4, and I believe 8 port models that I've found to be rock-solid and easily configurable. I'd stay away from the Rocketport products that have similar functionality, though (buggy drivers and seem to fail frequently).

Re:I haven't replaced serial ports...

[DarkVader]

That sounds like one of the old Keyspan PCI serial cards. I think I've still got one in a drawer somewhere.

I don't think they ever released an OS X driver for them, I'm not even sure they worked with Mac OS 9.

But I think AC was talking about the Keyspan USB serial adapters. I never used any other USB serial adapters, I've probably got 5-10 of them sitting around somewhere. I haven't needed one in quite a few years.

It replaced freedom

[Anonymous Coward]

Before USB, the PC had parallel ports, serial ports, Keyboard and mouse ports, ALL of which were unencumbered by patents and none of which required ID codes that had to be purchased from a monopolistic trade entity for $4000 or more. There was a minimal cost of entry for anybody in a garage who had a clever idea for something to add to a PC and even individuals could quickly hack together an interface to some custom hardware via the parallel port with no need for complex USB code and drivers. If you only plan to make a hundred gadgets, USB is insane. The Price to get a required ID number for your gadget is not reasonable, and if you use a USB-to-Serial chip with somebody else's ID number, you have essentially admitted you could have just used a standard serial port but are putting extra junk in your design because the host PC is missing the old standard serial port.

Microsoft hated this openness because it meant a huge array of stuff with which they had to avoid breaking compatibility in each new Windows release, so they wanted it all replaced in the PC99 spec with USB. At the time, they pretended no modern computer could run efficiently while connected to such old slow interfaces (something Linux proves is false) and that this was all for the benefit of the users.

Sadly, most people seem not to realize that many of the things (like mice,keyboards,serial adapters, etc) that use USB do not even need its speed. We would all have been much better served with an open, un-patented, USB-type interface without the MPEG-LA-style USB authority. There's no reason why ID numbers should not be bought as easily as MAC numbers (i.e. if a developer wants a few without going to the responsible authority, he can buy s cheap EEPROM from somebody like Microchip with a unique assigned number already burned-in).

USB is a very "mixed-bag" - better for live connect/disconnect, power and management on std cables and cons, but soul-sucking rights-hogging and freedom-squelching.

Personally, I'd like to see the whole industry replace USB with PoE (NOT using the infamous and un-necessary PoE patents). Drop all interfaces on a PC and do EVERYTHING with PoE - Keyboards, mice, printers, scanners, drives, everything. An open UDP-based protocol stack could be used to ID devices and detect when they plug-in. All devices could have standard (royalty-free) assigned device type codes just as we have standard assigned numbers. There's no reason other than control and royalties for why we need an authority selling numbers over a desktop bus.

Re:It replaced freedom

[unixisc]

USB was an Intel defined standard, not Microsoft defined. They originally defined it b'cos they wanted to go away from the myriad types of connectors and standardize them. Going to a serial interface also allowed for higher speeds.

That said, the myriad types of connections and connectors the standard had over time - Type A, B, C, mini, micro, et al has just served in having mismatched equipment - like not being able to use a mini-USB cable w/ a phone that takes micro-USB

Re:It replaced freedom

[Anonymous Coward]

You know, maybe you should learn to read. He never claimed that Microsoft defined the standard. He said they wanted it. Quite the difference.

Re:It replaced freedom

[serviscope_minor]

Going to a serial interface also allowed for higher speeds.

Not originally. Usb 1 was about 11mbit/s. You could quite easily clock the parallel port at over 1MHz, often as high as 2, giving a higher data rate. In ECP synchronous mode, there was even a small FIFO and DMA system, so you could do all that with almost no CPU overhead.

Re:It replaced freedom

[unixisc]

That was still way higher than RS-232. Not sure about Centronix

Re:It replaced freedom

[serviscope_minor]

Yeah, RS232 could clock reliably at a bit over a megabit or two (same as lo-speed USB), with a non ancient UART. Centronics was just another form factor for parallel, with more earth wires then the D sub minature 2d pin socket used on PCs for parallel ports.

It killed the wall wart cash cows.

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

Every cell phone manufacturer would make a new charger with a new connector totally incompatible with one another. Some manufacturer will change the charger between lines of their own product. (Nokia was a little more friendly than others in this respect). You forget to pack a charger you can't borrow one easily. You lose one, they come dunning for $19.99 + shipping and handling. What a mess!

Finally Android put a stop to it. Now on the android side almost all the chargers are ubiquitous micro USB. Most wearables and bluetooth headphones... almost all don't pack a wallwart any more. They just give a USB adapter to serve as charger.

I understand Apple still sees their users as captive market to be exploited using non standard cables, connectors etc each costing 20$

Re:It killed the wall wart cash cows.

[unixisc]

Along w/ Android, Microsoft too went the micro-USB connector way. Only unfortunate thing - the USB committee now decided that a symmetric connector is needed, and hence, here comes Type C. So now we'll have one set of standard phones w/ micro-USB slots and future set of phones w/ Type C

Re:It killed the wall wart cash cows.

[Lennie]

It has nothing to do with Android, it was the EU that did that:

http://www.engadget.com/2014/0...

And thus Apple will need to do the same by 2017 ?:

http://www.geek.com/apple/appl...

Re:It killed the wall wart cash cows.

[brantondaveperson]

ubiquitous micro USB

Which is shit, and breaks super-easily. And, considering that its primary use-case is now power, is designed entirely incorrectly for that purpose. It's keyed, and next to impossible to determine which way it should be inserted without either examining the connector carefully or trying three times. Its current carrying capacity is limited to 1.8Amps, which isn't enough to actually run a tablet without draining the battery, for instance.

Discussed before

[evilviper]

USB replaced PS/2 and IEEE 1284 (Parallel ports), and SCSI-1 (see: Pre-USB scanners, CD Burners, HDDs), and PCMCIA (see WiFi, Flash, Floppies, Zip drives, etc.), and game ports, and TOSLINK, and MIDI ports, and PCI slots (to a significant extent), and ADB, and infrared ports, and...

http://tech.slashdot.org/comme...

Re:Discussed before

[unixisc]

Actually, has IEEE 1394 been replaced? For the longest time, I was unable to get camcorders w/o Firewire, which was needed if you wanted to play your video from the computer just by connecting the camcorder to the PC. An USB connection wouldn't work, but Firewire did.

Re:Discussed before

[ihtoit]

usb is useless IMO for production video work - bus contention is just too high.

Re:Discussed before

[evilviper]

Firewire is long dead, except for a few niches in the industry.

DV cameras were the one and only practical consumer application of firewire, and they've been obsolete and forgotten for many years. Once you eliminate DV tape and switch to solid-state, you eliminate the need for the fixed-bit-rate codec, and can easily transfer faster-than-real-time over USB2.

In fact, you can skip the USB cables, and transfer your videos over WiFi these days, even with sub-$100 camcorders...

Re:Discussed before

[evilviper]

USB is dirt cheap. You can have a separate bus-per-device if you so desire. That will easily eliminate all contention.

And what you really mean is USB is useless for REAL-TIME work... When USB can do faster-than-realtime for you, the contention and other gripes aren't much of an issue. Firewire is dying out in production video shops, too, though it has been (almost-) replaced by several different alternatives, not (just) USB.

Re:Discussed before

[Tapewolf]

USB replaced PS/2 and IEEE 1284 (Parallel ports), and SCSI-1 (see: Pre-USB scanners, CD Burners, HDDs), and PCMCIA (see WiFi, Flash, Floppies, Zip drives, etc.), and game ports, and TOSLINK, and MIDI ports, and PCI slots (to a significant extent), and ADB, and infrared ports, and...

http://tech.slashdot.org/comme...

It'll be a while yet before MIDI is replaced. TOSLINK as well. USB needs a computer to work - with MIDI you can link keyboards and instruments together point to point without having to run everything through a computer (which will add latency and only works when the software is running).

There are keyboards which support USB host mode, but they only ever use it for file I/O and firmware upgrades. You can't plug in a controller keyboard through it, it has to go via MIDI IN. Most of them do support MIDI over USB as well, but only for computer control (and sometimes for power) not for any kind of chaining. And I've never yet come across a synthesizer, or indeed any device at all other than a soundcard that supports audio over USB. The output is always 1/4" or TOSLINK if you're lucky.

Re:Discussed before

[Anonymous Coward]

Audio interfaces were another. Music and recording instruments are not mainstream, but the mainstay of the industry is consumers rather than professionals.

Re:Discussed before

[Anonymous Coward]

There are a number of recent instruments that do audio over USB - look at the TR8 for example.

Re:Discussed before

[v1]

DV cameras were the one and only practical consumer application of firewire,

For years, firewire buried usb in terms of hard drive transfer speeds. (solid 800mbps vs laggy 480mbps) But it was during this time that PC motherboard manufacturers stubbornly refused to put firewire ports on their boards. Also during this time, it was difficult to impossible to boot a windows computer from an external drive. These factors led to almost a decade of time where the macs were the only computers that commonly used high performing external storage. (and not just for video) The windows users literally didn't know what they were missing, and most remained blissfully unaware. A few I know installed firewire cards and talked to me like they'd just discovered this amazing hidden technology that nobody else knew about.

Processor and controller advances (both in the computer and in the external drive controllers) during this time slowly removed the lag, and I suspect that's why it took so long to get USB3 out the door, they just weren't in enough of a rush to innovate. There was no push from the consumer side, and no one wanted to be the first to add FW as a standard option. The benchmarks I ran as early as 2012 were still running into slow controllers. There were a specific set of common speeds, determined by which chipset the manufacturer happened to be using. Speeds were now usually either 26 or 36 MB/sec, although there were a small number of them running at 39 and unbelievably still at 18. During this entire time, firewire 400 has been running at a consistent 39MB/sec, (fw800 at 79MB/sec!) and at the end there was about a 50/50 split between 36 and 39MB/sec on new USB adapters.

So then USB3 is announced and the world is buzzing. So I asked, "If you wanted higher speeds why didn't you just get firewire?" "Firewire? What's that?" "Nevermind...." But by the time USB3 came out, thunderbolt was hitting the stage to be the new usb dominator. USB seems to be doomed to be a generation behind. For the first year and a half it was almost impossible to find a USB3 drive that actually performed at speeds substantially faster than firewire 800, because most of them were trying to keep costs down after changing to USB3 by using slower hard drives. 90 and 130MB/sec HDDs were the norm in most of the early USB3 enclosures, but hey, they got to stamp "USB3!!!" all over the box and get the suckers to buy them without reading the fine print. The enclosures that had actual fast drives in them were more expensive and so were mostly overlooked. We had to endure years of "USB3 speed" flash drives that were below USB2's maximum speeds for exactly the same reason. The "premium high speed" flash drives cost 2-3x as much, and while they read faster, they still had slower write speeds.

There's just a large chunk of the demographic that wasn't seeing the faster alternatives. But at this point the storage, even though it's much faster, has been surpassed finally by the interface. I have a Lacie 500gb ssd with dual USB3/TB interface, and both of them top out at the same speed of 438MB/sec, which appears to be the SSD's maximum speed. I'd need to have an SSD raid with fiber-channel grade speeds to do a comparison now, which I don't have. So for now, for me at least, they're effectively the same. The speed of home-grade networking (gigabit ethernet) has become the bottleneck now, but this time it's affecting us all equally. (438MB/sec requires about a 4gbps connection to properly saturate, even dual-link gig ethernet just isn't up to the task)

Re:Discussed before

[unixisc]

Firewire is long dead, except for a few niches in the industry.

DV cameras were the one and only practical consumer application of firewire, and they've been obsolete and forgotten for many years. Once you eliminate DV tape and switch to solid-state, you eliminate the need for the fixed-bit-rate codec, and can easily transfer faster-than-real-time over USB2.

In fact, you can skip the USB cables, and transfer your videos over WiFi these days, even with sub-$100 camcorders...

Yeah, the capacities of SD cards and so on had increased well to the point where DV tapes were a waste. But I thought that USB 2 was inadequate, or rather, that High Speed USB was inadequate, and that they needed Super Speed USB (3) in order to get video transfers enabled over USB

Re:Discussed before

[evilviper]

But I thought that USB 2 was inadequate, or rather, that High Speed USB was inadequate, and that they needed Super Speed USB (3) in order to get video transfers enabled over USB

USB2 is just fast enough to about max-out the transfer speed of a Class-6 SD card (i.e. real-time), which is on the high-end and more than fast enough for 1080 video recordings (can usually get away with Class-4).

You'll only need speeds above that for all I-frames/stills in 1080 (e.g. for studio use) or 4K recording... And even then, you could still transfer the data over USB2 if needed, just at less-than real-time.

Re:Discussed before

[evilviper]

For years, firewire buried usb in terms of hard drive transfer speeds. (solid 800mbps vs laggy 480mbps) But it was during this time that PC motherboard manufacturers stubbornly refused to put firewire ports on their boards. Also during this time, it was difficult to impossible to boot a windows computer from an external drive. These factors led to almost a decade of time where the macs were the only computers that commonly used high performing external storage.

Uhh, not really... Even Apple balked at the expense of Firewire-800, and mostly stuck with 400, except in their most expensive products.

When Firewire-800 was introduced, hard drives couldn't even keep-up with Firewire-400 or USB2 speeds. Even the 15,000 RPM Seagate Cheetah drives introduced around 2002 had maximum throughput of 60MB/sec, while their average was lower.

Firewire-800 was 2002... Around 2004, higher-end PCs started getting eSATA connectors that were at worst TWICE AS FAST as Firewire-800. And yes, as above, eSATA was much faster than necessary, too. Most hard drives, particularly external 2.5" ones, weren't seriously bottle-necked by USB2 speeds, which is why USB3 took so long to materialize.

Re:Discussed before

[UnknowingFool]

USB is dirt cheap. You can have a separate bus-per-device if you so desire. That will easily eliminate all contention.

I don't think cheap equates to performance. The problem with USB is that it is CPU bound meaning that contention isn't as easy to remove as you think. For most video production work, the CPU is busy with processing the video and is limited by USB transfer. This limitation isn't a problem for a keyboard or mouse because the amount of information is quite small but video, music encoding? There's a reason why USB-based speakers never really made it so far.

And what you really mean is USB is useless for REAL-TIME work... When USB can do faster-than-realtime for you, the contention and other gripes aren't much of an issue.

No, USB doesn't. That's been the whole point. USB2 has a theoretical max of 480MB/s while Firewire 400 (the original) is 400Mb/s. In theory, USB2 should have no contention. In reality USB2 would get far lower (35MB/s) while Firewire would get around 49MB/s. USB3 pushes the max to 625MB/s while the practical rate is around 400MB/s (less than 60% actual efficieny).

Firewire is dying out in production video shops, too, though it has been (almost-) replaced by several different alternatives, not (just) USB.

Yes but production shops didn't turn to USB for Firewire's replacement. They may have tried eSATA and then Thunderbolt. Maybe they will use PCI-E in the future. USB3 is closer to Thunderbolt 1 but is beat out by Thunderbolt 2.

Re:Discussed before

[evilviper]

The problem with USB is that it is CPU bound meaning that contention isn't as easy to remove as you think. For most video production work, the CPU is busy with processing the video

On a tech site, I'd think you'd know about multi-core CPUs and such... They're pretty common these days.

the practical rate is around 400MB/s (less than 60% actual efficieny).

That's not a question of efficiency, and theoretical gripes don't matter to anyone. In the real world, it's plenty fast, and you'd be hard pressed to point to an actual scenario where someone tried and found they were unable to use USB.

Re:Discussed before

[UnknowingFool]

On a tech site, I'd think you'd know about multi-core CPUs and such... They're pretty common these days.

On a tech site you'd think you'd know that processing video takes more than 1 core. You want ALL your cores working on the video, not transferring a file. Some libraries like libx264 are built for multiple cores especially when used with ffmpeg. This is why Firewire and eSATA and Thunderbolt are preferred. All of them have independent chips which handle the work so the CPU doesn't have to do it.

That's not a question of efficiency, and theoretical gripes don't matter to anyone.

Yes it is. With an high inefficiency it means that the actual, realtime performance is affected by a number of outside factors. In the real world, USB3 is rarely used for professional work. eSATA, Thunderbolt and even Firewire is used.

In the real world, it's plenty fast, and you'd be hard pressed to point to an actual scenario where someone tried and found they were unable to use USB.

You've confused the argument. I don't doubt USB is everywhere; I've said it is a poor choice for realtime work like video. To use a car analogy, I can use a Toyota Camry to transport some home improvement materials. For small items once in a while (a gallon of paint, some tape), it's fine. If it was my job was as a home improvement contractor, I would buy a truck. Your example would be to argue that Toyota Camry is fine for all home improvement because they are everywhere. A Camry is a poor choice for the professional work.

Re:Discussed before

[evilviper]

Some libraries like libx264 are built for multiple cores especially when used with ffmpeg.

I know them quite well... I've done some minor dev work on them. But with multi-threading, you get diminishing returns and can't fully max-out all the cores, no matter how much you want to, you'll have some idle CPU time on some cores... increasing amounts as you increase the core count.

This is why Firewire and eSATA and Thunderbolt are preferred. All of them have independent chips which handle the work so the CPU doesn't have to do it.

A completely specious argument... The overhead of a USB transfer doesn't drag-down a modern CPU. Take just a few dollars of the money you'd pay for Firewire versions of your gear, and use it to get a slightly higher-end CPU. Now the overhead of USB is covered, you've saved some money, and you're better-off all-around.

Firewire is around because of legacy DV cameras. If Firewire was any good, eSATA wouldn't have ever appeared. But it's still around mostly because it had several years' head-start on USB3.
Thunderbolt is only a thing because Apple has a dog in the fight, so they insist on forcing it on their users like Firewire before it, or PPC processors before it, or now with H.264 and blocking Flash and WebM, or a million other examples.

I've said it is a poor choice for realtime work

Except I already said USB isn't good for real-time... But with most use cases USB can easily do faster-than-real-time, which eliminates the issue.

Your example would be to argue that Toyota Camry is fine for all home improvement because they are everywhere.

No, my argument would be that you've so far been unable to name even ONE single case, where your Toyota Camry has been insufficient for the task...

Re:Discussed before

[UnknowingFool]

I know them quite well... I've done some minor dev work on them. But with multi-threading, you get diminishing returns and can't fully max-out all the cores, no matter how much you want to, you'll have some idle CPU time on some cores... increasing amounts as you increase the core count.

Er what? So you should waste processing time on a core to transfer files because in practice you can get the cores to work 100% of the time. Sure, whatever.

A completely specious argument... The overhead of a USB transfer doesn't drag-down a modern CPU. Take just a few dollars of the money you'd pay for Firewire versions of your gear, and use it to get a slightly higher-end CPU. Now the overhead of USB is covered, you've saved some money, and you're better-off all-around.

I gave you the actual real world numbers above. For USB2, the overhead was 90%. USB3 it was about 30%. For the average person surfing the web, USB transfer doesn't drag it down. If you are encoding 1080p (or higher) video using multiple cores, I will tell you that the USB transfer will slow it down.

Take just a few dollars of the money you'd pay for Firewire versions of your gear, and use it to get a slightly higher-end CPU.

A Firewire 400 card is about $20. That is much less than a few hundred dollars for a new CPU.

Firewire is around because of legacy DV cameras. If Firewire was any good, eSATA wouldn't have ever appeared.

Now that's a specious argument. Firewire is OLDER than eSATA. Firewire was the best transfer you could get at the time and the original 400 still beats USB2. Over time standards get replaced. That's like saying if 1080p was any good why are we moving to 4K televisions?

But it's still around mostly because it had several years' head-start on USB3.

You answered your own question and you didn't know it; however, for realtime work I wouldn't use USB3.

Thunderbolt is only a thing because Apple has a dog in the fight, so they insist on forcing it on their users like Firewire before it, or PPC processors before it, or now with H.264 and blocking Flash and WebM, or a million other examples.

Thunderbolt is an Intel spec just like USB. Apple helped develop Thunderbolt and was one of the early adopters. Firewire, at the time, was the best transfer protocol that anyone could use. When Apple put it in their machines(1999), USB2 wasn't even an approved spec yet (December 200). I don't know what you mean by "forcing" users. Users didn't have any other option. It wasn't until years later till USB2 had mass adoption; even then Firewire 400 devices were still clearly better.

No, my argument would be that you've so far been unable to name even ONE single case, where your Toyota Camry has been insufficient for the task.

Hello? Encoding video? Professional video work?

Uncommon Hardware

[darkain]

The biggest advantage for USB is for uncommon hardware configurations. For instance, I recently started using Yubikeys for authentication. Instead of getting a smartcard adapter for my desktop, laptop, and cell phone (god, just image carrying all that around!), I just have the one USB dongle that can plug into any computer or NFC to the cell phone.

I also do quite a bit of photography. Prior to USB, I honestly can't even remember a time when tethering a digital camera to a PC for remote shutter or instance image transfer upon capture even existed.

"Mass Storage" is one of those all encompassing things that USB does quite well these days. Need a boot device for a server? BAM, USB drive. Need to move just a couple GB of files from one building to the next where they don't have direct gigabit+ network links? BAM, another USB drive. Need to quickly access tools or drivers to fix a computer? Those are all on the micro SD card on my cell phone, which acts as a USB mass storage device when plugged into a computer.

Re:Uncommon Hardware

[Anonymous Coward]

Prior to USB, tethering was possible but only over Firewire; the Fuji S2 did this (proper shoot-to-PC and remote control stuff). The software was terrible but it did work.

Re:Uncommon Hardware

[Anonymous Coward]

"Mass Storage" is one of those all encompassing things that USB does quite well these days. Need a boot device for a server? BAM, USB drive. Need to move just a couple GB of files from one building to the next where they don't have direct gigabit+ network links? BAM, another USB drive. Need to quickly access tools or drivers to fix a computer? Those are all on the micro SD card on my cell phone, which acts as a USB mass storage device when plugged into a computer.

Until google decided to use mtp and ptp only, for which support on Linux is still pretty shoddy.

USB created a whole category of products.

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

No one ever figured out the right way to power a little fan attached to the chop sticks to cool your noodles as you pull them from the bowl, till USB came along. And there were some twenty more such crazy things powered by USB.

Before I needed 12 different cables

[Anonymous Coward]

Now all I need is 12 different USB cables!

Re:Before I needed 12 different cables

[Xtifr]

Huh, I'm down to three, and one of those is only used with some fairly old devices I have. (Actually, I've only got one of those old devices left in service.) Other than that, I just have full-sized and new-phone-standard minis.

I do have a fairly extensive collection of old cables with a wide variety of sizes and shapes, though. So I feel your pain. :)

Apple Desktop Bus

[Dusthead Jr.]

I've always been fond of Apple's ADB. It seemed like the closest thing to USB as far as I know of, at least compared to IBM's PS/2. ADB seemed more versatile than PS/2, which was easy to mistake the PS/2 mouse port with the PS/2 keyboard port. The only other versatile port I can think was SCSI with it's ability to chain devices.

Re:Apple Desktop Bus

[Etcetera]

I've always been fond of Apple's ADB. It seemed like the closest thing to USB as far as I know of, at least compared to IBM's PS/2. ADB seemed more versatile than PS/2, which was easy to mistake the PS/2 mouse port with the PS/2 keyboard port. The only other versatile port I can think was SCSI with it's ability to chain devices.

Yeah, this. Surprised more people haven't mentioned this. ADB was pretty far ahead of its time, considering it debuted with .. what, the Mac SE? Apple IIGS? I forget which of those came out first, but certainly way back in the day.

More to the point... All this discussion about USB adoption without really mentioning what made it actually take off. The Original iMac. Only someone like Steve Jobs could get the company to agree to drop essentially ALL legacy support at once and force people into this newfangled thing. Apple missed the boat on CD-RW's for a few years, but the iMac really ignited widespread USB adoption on both sides of the divide.

Re:Apple Desktop Bus

[Anonymous Coward]

I've always been fond of Apple's ADB. It seemed like the closest thing to USB as far as I know of, at least compared to IBM's PS/2. ADB seemed more versatile than PS/2, which was easy to mistake the PS/2 mouse port with the PS/2 keyboard port. The only other versatile port I can think was SCSI with it's ability to chain devices.

My understanding is that Apple's ADB was a technological precursor to USB. (I can't recall where I read it now; might have been folklore.org.)

Apple's original ADB design was enhanced and built upon to become the USB standard we have today.

So when you say is seemed like the closest thing to USB, indeed it was -- it was the father of USB.

Re:Apple Desktop Bus

[Anonymous Coward]

Wasn't ADB designed by The Woz ?

Re:Apple Desktop Bus

[Dusthead Jr.]

Form what I read the original ADB was going to be based on a jack similar to headphone jack. It would have solved the problem of trying to find the orientation of insertion without even looking. Something that hadn't been solved since Lighting and USB 3 C.

Re:Apple Desktop Bus

[Anonymous Coward]

Holy shit, you're right.

Re:Apple Desktop Bus

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, this. Surprised more people haven't mentioned this. ADB was pretty far ahead of its time, considering it debuted with .. what, the Mac SE? Apple IIGS? I forget which of those came out first, but certainly way back in the day.

It was the Apple IIGS.

More to the point... All this discussion about USB adoption without really mentioning what made it actually take off. The Original iMac. Only someone like Steve Jobs could get the company to agree to drop essentially ALL legacy support at once and force people into this newfangled thing. Apple missed the boat on CD-RW's for a few years, but the iMac really ignited widespread USB adoption on both sides of the divide.

No, the reason it took off was because it was integrated into every PC motherboard. If that hadn't happened, USB would have been dead in the water.

Re:Apple Desktop Bus

[moonlandingchap]

More to the point... All this discussion about USB adoption without really mentioning what made it actually take off. The Original iMac. Only someone like Steve Jobs could get the company to agree to drop essentially ALL legacy support at once and force people into this newfangled thing. Apple missed the boat on CD-RW's for a few years, but the iMac really ignited widespread USB adoption on both sides of the divide.

The only thing the imac brought to the world was the mass overuse of the blue LED and the 'trend' for housing devices in coloured translucent plastic. Any self respecting mac user from back in the day shunned the imac as the pile of crap it was and stuck with their much more geek friendly towers. The only place the imac really caught on was in public use applications due to it's all in one design and for tech unsavvy punters who wanted a computer and were suckered in my the bright blue light and colourful plastic. It was Apple's single most craptastic creation ever and should be struck from the records in shame. Take off the rose tinted glasses and put down the weed.

Re:Apple Desktop Bus

[serviscope_minor]

I disagree. It was a right bloody pain in the arse. My sister got an iMac to go to uni and the sodding thing came with USB only.

USB sticks didn't exist more or less and besides, USB on PCs was so flakey that had they existed they would have been unusable. The solution of course was to get a USB Floppy drive for exchanging data with people. That more or less worked. It didn't come with a CD recorder of course because those were super expensive back then.

Oh and the scanner. Oh my god. Ever tried running a scanner on USB1? Now that is a good way to learn patience. Scanning needed to be done, but that thing was so slow. Much, much slower than SCSI scanners. Much. The USB port was far slower than the scanner hardware. It would zip along, stop, upload data, zip along etc etc. I swear it took minutes per page, or worse.

Oh yeah and then there was the sodding puck mouse. Wretched thing. Third party USB mice did exist fortunately, but they weren't all that common, weren't all that reliable and were expensive too, compared to the infinite number of quality PS/2 mice around.

Legacy free is fine, but they were about 5 years too early.

Re:Apple Desktop Bus

[BlueUnderwear]

I disagree. It was a right bloody pain in the arse.

I think you should report that Mac for aggravated rape (and maybe make yourself some pocket money in the process?).

My sister got an iMac to go to uni and the sodding thing came with USB only.

Hey, maybe she should carry that iMac around with her everywhere she goes on campus, and there's her art project for the final year?

USB sticks didn't exist more or less and besides, USB on PCs was so flakey that had they existed they would have been unusable.

Well, if I remember correctly, back then those USB sticks were bigger (physically, I mean, not memory-wise), so they were not completely useless...

The solution of course was to get a USB Floppy drive for exchanging data with people.

Well, another advantage of the usb sticks. Those never went floppy.

Oh and the scanner. Oh my god. Ever tried running a scanner on USB1? Now that is a good way to learn patience. Scanning needed to be done, but that thing was so slow. Much.

You womenfolk are never happy. Often we're to quick for you, and now you complain about slowness...

The USB port was far slower than the scanner hardware. It would zip along, stop, upload data, zip along etc etc. I swear it took minutes per page, or worse.

hehe, maybe you should get a USB car instead, with a little bit of luck, it would zip along, stop, produce some petrol, zip along, etc. And then you could sell that petrol to the other people, whose car consumes petrol instead...

Oh yeah and then there was the sodding puck mouse. Wretched thing. Third party USB mice did exist fortunately, but they weren't all that common, weren't all that reliable and were expensive too, compared to the infinite number of quality PS/2 mice around.

But that mouse sure would feel nice in your cunt....

Legacy free is fine, but they were about 5 years too early.

A, there you go! Complaining again about being too early!

Re:Apple Desktop Bus

[serviscope_minor]

Are you on glue?

Centronics printers were not Centroncs-compatible

[Anonymous Coward]

The "Centronics-compatible" parallel port was compatible with Epson's interpretation of the Centronics-printer interface. An actual Centronics printer would not work, as one control line was inverted from Epson's interpretation. I found this out when I replaced the worn-out Centronics printer on a minicomputer with a newer printer from Digital Equipment.

I wish they would use it on telescope mounts

[jfdavis668]

Modern computer controlled telescopes still use classic serial ports to control the mount. The mounts have computerized controls built it that once you align it with the sky, you can direct it to slew to any point in the sky. You can hook them up to computers to run the operation, but need to use serial ports. And, of course, telescope manufactures don't use standard DB9 connectors, they replace them with phone style RJ45 and RJ11 connectors. So you need to purchase an RJ to DB9 serial cable, then hook it to a DB9 Serial to USB cable, just to hook it to a laptop. You think they would at least sell you an RJ to USB cable, but nobody makes one of those. You can buy the most modern equipment, and you are still controlling it with a kludged together cable system.

Re:I wish they would use it on telescope mounts

[Anonymous Coward]

Modern computer controlled telescopes still use classic serial ports to control the mount. [...] So you need to purchase an RJ to DB9 serial cable, then hook it to a DB9 Serial to USB cable, just to hook it to a laptop.

Someone had posted a step-by-step guide on /r/astrophotography where I was disappointed to learn that adapting consumer telescopes to a DSLR is just as kludgy. Your comment is putting more nails in the coffin...carrying more cables in a dark backyard sounds like a tripping hazard. Well, my laptop and prospective telescopes would risk losing in a fall than my own body. That astronomy is still stuck in the dark edges gives me a bittersweet feeling. This is still all academic, since New York City has horrible light pollution

i only seen too things disappear

[FudRucker]

the RS232 serial port and the parallel printer port from the back of PCs, i went out and searched for a desktop that still had a RS232 serial port so i can run a SDR radio naively (old Ten-Tec RX320) one of these days i will buy a nice Bonito RadioJet 1120s or Perseus, but those radios cost big bucks, and the RTL.SDR is cheap but it is also a piece of junk

Re:i only seen too things disappear

[ElectraFlarefire]

While neither will do HF nativly, try one of their two with the matching transverters.
http://airspy.com/ http://www.nooelec.com/store/h...

Both USB, both nice to use. HackRF has wider bandwidth and transmits. Airspy is more sensitive and stable.

Re:i only seen too things disappear

[Pikoro]

SDRPlay has native HF support and it's only about $150. I'm going to pick one up for christmas. 8Mhz of bandwidth too! http://www.sdrplay.com/

USB is a support nightmare

[fyngyrz]

Unlike ethernet, which is pretty much standard from platform to platform and basically trivial to support, USB code is completely different between linux, OS X, and Windows, and is a mess, API-wise.

I write software defined radio stuff, and after one incredible nightmare getting a USB SDR to work on all three platforms using conditional compilation (I did succeed), I swore off. No more. If it doesn't have an ethernet interface, or a USB-to-ethernet server app compatible with the standard SDR protocols that makes it appear to me as an ethernet SDR, it's not happening.

Luckily, some of the best SDR manufacturers out there have done it right. Andrus, AFDRI, and RFSPACE. And there are some servers that have been built to hide the abortion of USB, but so far they are very much platform-specific, for the very reason I described above.

USB. Ugh.

Re:USB is a support nightmare

[Anonymous Coward]

All you have to do is create yet another API, and use it to write shims for the other three!

Seriously, though, the way Windows handles USB is so amazingly stupid. Unplug a mouse from one port and plug in into a different port. I'm not even talking about some special custom type of device that needs proprietary drivers, just a generic HID mouse. It will then spend about 30 seconds "installing" the drivers for that other port. And good luck if you take a hub full of devices and plug that into a different port.

Re:USB is a support nightmare

[Anonymous Coward]

That was Windows XP, dipshit! Later versions of Windows don't do this.

Re: USB is a support nightmare

[Redmancometh]

Found the guy who last used or upgraded Windows a decade ago.

Re:USB is a support nightmare

[Anonymous Coward]

Windows 7 still does it.

Re:USB is a support nightmare

[KingMotley]

This doesn't happen if your USB device properly supports USB serial numbers. The problem only exists if windows has to generate a semi-unique serial number for the device because it decided not to implement it.

Re: USB is a support nightmare

[Anonymous Coward]

So did Windows 10, in our recent scenario lab at uni. The Linux crowd hissed and jeered and laughed. I can not blame them.

Re: USB is a support nightmare

[Anonymous Coward]

It should have worked a decade ago. A lot of things working today in Linux won't work in Windows for another decade. Digest that one for a moment.

Re: USB is a support nightmare

[Anonymous Coward]

I observe this behavior with Windows 7 and FiiO E17.
(I'm a different AC than GP. Let's call me Montag The Magnificent, so nobody gets confused.)

Re: USB is a support nightmare

[Anonymous Coward]

> Found the guy who last used or upgraded Windows a decade ago.

Redmancometh is smoking something good, it seems...

At work, this happened _this_ year. And being a M$ shop there's a policy to change computers every 3-year -- wich actually never happens because people find it extremely annoying to move all data because M$ wants money. My computer must be about 5 year old.

But it doesn't matter. I did exactly that: changed a mouse from one port to another (the mouse had a short cable and there was a closer USB port). WIndows stopped recognizing it.

Being a Linux user, I thought: "Uh, WTF? It's a generic mouse... how can it not work? Actually, it's the same mouse which is working on the USB port at the back of the PC tower, why does it need to install a driver when moved to the front one?"

Remember that old joke "Your mouse has moved. Please reboot Windows to incorporate this change."? Well, it kinda sucks when it really happens...

> A lot of things working today in Linux won't work in Windows for another decade. Digest that one for a moment.

This is worrisome, for sure. Until one realizes that some things working today in Linux won't ever work in Windows: because there's little interest (like localization in a less-spoken language), market reasons (like supporting a competitor's hardware) or simply because M$ wants the current version to die (so people buy the next one).

And people pay for that!

Linux is free, so whatever you get is always an extra; with proprietary platforms, you get what you pay -- and don't ask for more than it's on the contract.

The problem is what you think you paid for is not what the seller thinks you're entitled to get. Caveat emptor.

Re: USB is a support nightmare

[Anonymous Coward]

*raises hand*

Yes. What?

Re: USB is a support nightmare

[Spugglefink]

Found the guy who last used or upgraded Windows a decade ago.

I resemble that remark. The last version of Windows I used for anything serious was Window ME. I've seen in the interim that it got better, but it's still really annoying. I can live without it.

Re:USB is a support nightmare

[Anonymous Coward]

As someone who works with industrial peripherals and systems I completely agree, USB is banned, it's either serial or ethernet.

Re: USB is a support nightmare

[Tukz]

Both my Windows 7 at home and my Windows 10 at work does exactly the same.
If I unplug a peripheral, and plug it back in in another USB port, Windows recognizes it as a new device and starts installing drivers.

Re: USB is a support nightmare

[Anonymous Coward]

I only use USB as a replacement for the missing serial port that disappeared from all laptops about 10 years ago. I work industrial too and need to talk to 15-20 year old devices (yes monochrome displays still work) . RS - 232 and 485 work at 20' and longer and use cheap twisted pair cables. They actually terminate at a terminal strip with real screws! Old can still work.

Re:USB is a support nightmare

[LinuxIsGarbage]

Then there's trying to use USB->RS-232 adapters. Plug it in one port and it's COM1, plug it in another port and it's COM2. Plug it back in the first port and it's COM3. Then you can't re-designate it to COM1 in device manager because it's mysteriously "in use". This is particularly a problem for antique legacy software that only recognize COM1-4, (and suddenly you can't get anything lower than COM12) and generally a pain in the ass because you have to double check the COM port of the adapter before using it in software.

* The best way to rectify it is under environment variables in system properties, set "devmgr_show_nonpresent_devices=1", then in device manager you can "view- show hidden devices" Delete the multiple copies of your serial port and now you can set a lower COM port.

While you're at it you can clean out every mouse, keyboard / port combination, and every flash drive / port combination since the beginning of time.

* This Microsoft KB talks about setting the environment variable in a command prompt which will work one time. Adding it to system properties leaves that option always in Device manager.

Re: USB is a support nightmare

[LinuxIsGarbage]

I only use USB as a replacement for the missing serial port that disappeared from all laptops about 10 years ago. I work industrial too and need to talk to 15-20 year old devices (yes monochrome displays still work) . RS - 232 and 485 work at 20' and longer and use cheap twisted pair cables. They actually terminate at a terminal strip with real screws! Old can still work.

And unlike some specialty USB interfaces, and especially specialty hardware interface (ISA or PCI cards), RS-232 seems to retain good forward compatibility. You can take an application designed for Windows 3.1, run it on native Windows 7/8.1/10 32 bit (or in a 32-bit VM like XP mode on 64 bit flavors), point it to your $2 from China RS232-USB adapter, and it will talk to the hardware.

I really like hardware that once connected with RS-232, can interface with any terminal software on any platform, and not just proprietary software.

Re:USB is a support nightmare

[Wootery]

All you have to do is create yet another API, and use it to write shims for the other three!

Oh, there's already one of those available: libusb, for user-mode USB programming. Supports Mac/Win/Lin/Android/BSD/Haiku.

I've never done any USB programming of any form, but I get the impression libusb is a fairly serious library.

Re: USB is a support nightmare

[Wootery]

I believe the 'modern, superior' solution involves XML and port 80.

Because web technologies are clearly the solution to everything, everywhere!

Re: USB is a support nightmare

[piers_downunder]

So why does this still happen to me on Windows 10 (64-bit Professional) with a Microsoft mouse?

Re: USB is a support nightmare

[JohnStock]

Then the Windows user went on and did something actually productive with their OS

Re: USB is a support nightmare

[krakelohm]

Eventually... after he was able to use his keyboard and mouse again.

Re: USB is a support nightmare

[LinuxIsGarbage]

I can't tell if you're being sarcastic or not, but as industrial automation moves from proprietary networks to Ethernet based networks, it's very common to find devices with HTTP based configuration and status pages (even think of consumer routers). Assuming no proprietary plugins (Java, Flash) are used, it may be the closest to a "modern" equivalent.

Though there's still something nice and simple about an RS-232 terminal interface, and the relative ease it can be implemented.

Re: USB is a support nightmare

[Anonymous Coward]

> Though there's still something nice and simple about an RS-232 terminal interface, and the relative ease it can be implemented.

Yeah... if PCs still had RS-232 ports...

Sigh.

Re:USB is a support nightmare

[rdnetto]

Newsflash: *most* USB devices lack serial numbers.

Of the 18 USB devices plugged into my PC, only 2 of them have serial numbers, and they're the same model. The USB hubs built into the motherboard also have serial numbers, but those can be identified by PCI address so that's not as useful.

I have a Linux multiseat config, and the only way to reliably recognize seats is to make sure you always plug the hubs into the same ports.

Re: USB is a support nightmare

[Anonymous Coward]

Difference between have a configuration or status page via HTTP and having a motor control channel over HTTP.

Hundreds of little propretary buses

[drolli]

It may not have killed RS232 (which is way too old and simple to replace i completely), but do you remember the time when every external device (scanner, camera) had it's own implementation of talking to you computer? Or when big PC vendors would define their own "expansion busses".

These times are gone for good.

custom devices are a rare thing today

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, USB has all sorts of extra hurdles, which are insurmountable for the garage inventor. But, USB gives stringing multiple devices together, low cost of manufacturing in client devices, stringing multiple devices to a single port, and high speed data. That is a good engineering tradeoff. For, the occasional custom device, one can buy a serial port expansion card, and program the device to use it.

12 Varieties on USB on your desk?

[Anonymous Coward]

Okay, I call bullshit. 12 different types of cables? Name them.

I'm not saying there isn't a theoretical set of 12 different cables, but those exotic ones nobody uses? Yeah, this guy doesn't use them either. I have boxes of old cables from the last 30-odd years of computing and I'll bet I can only find 4 types of USB cables in there. A millennial Classics graduate certainly doesn't have 12 different varieties of USB cable on his desk, unless he has some kind of set-collecting fetish.

Re:12 Varieties on USB on your desk?

[ihtoit]

Before USB there were 14 competing standards. After USB came out, suddenly there were 15 competing standards. One of which now does indeed use no less than 12 different plugs, and these are what's in my cable drawer: type A, type B, type C, type C mid, mini 5, micro 5, micro 4, mini a, mini b, micro a, micro b, at least two Samsung connectors, at least two Motorola connectors, at least four(!) Nokia connectors, at least two Apple connectors, who knows how many Sony connectors because you could never get a data connection using a cable from a different Sony device on your walkman phone... I'm not talking about ANYTHING with intermediate electronics here, these are straight-through connectors.

Re:12 Varieties on USB on your desk?

[Anonymous Coward]

Before USB there were 14 competing standards, after USB came out, there were 3 competing standards and 12 legacy standards that only ancient PCs used.

Re: 12 Varieties on USB on your desk?

[Anonymous Coward]

USB cables have a type A connector on one end and a type b on the other. There is type a plug and usb3 type a plug. There are type b standard, b mini 4 pin, b mini 5 pin, b micro, and usb3 micro. Add to that male and female genders of each and see how many cable combinations you come up with.

For many users, yes..but

[MpVpRb]

Serial ports are still used in a LOT of equipment

USB-to-serial adapters work, but have a maddening array of annoying quirks. It seems like every time you plug one in, it gets a different COM port ID

Parallel ports are also used in a lot of specialized stuff (like low-budget CNC). NOT for printing, but for providing a somewhat high-speed, 5V logic level digital interface

USB-to-parallel adapters fail miserably in this case. They are programmed to provide a printer port, but some software uses the hardware I/O addresses, NOT the printer driver

Re:For many users, yes..but

[Anonymous Coward]

It seems like every time you plug one in, it gets a different COM port ID

That's an MS Windows issue, not a USB one. Linux doesn't have that problem.

Re:For many users, yes..but

[Anonymous Coward]

Even on Windows 8, the USB IDs problem was still lurking around. I've not tested on Ten.

I couldn't find a link to the dinosaur comics (qwantz.com) that was making fun of this design failure a decade ago. It was something to the effect of "The USB spaceship we're detecting must be your *second* one".
Windows alone must have confused and wasted time for countless users trying to print via USB. This flaw was at its worst back when *all* PC cases had the USB ports in the hard-to-reach area *behind* your PC. Workaround: get under your desk until trial and error located the 1/4 USB port that Windows recognized as the original slot.

USB Wine

[sk999]

Before USB, I don't think there was any connector that would let you download wine straight from the vineyard. Quite revolutionary.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Not much

[tompaulco]

My mouse is USB. I have a rarely used video camera that is USB. I have a couple of thumb drives and a backup drive that are USB. I have some phone chargers that are USB. Printer is on the network, speakers are 1/8" stereo plug, monitor is Display Port, keyboard is PS/2.

standardised physical connectors

[ihtoit]

if I can replace a device with a serial, ps/2, or parallel port with one which has one of the standard USB terminal connectors or hardwired to a console connector, I'm happy. Less so but still happy if I can update existing devices with nothing more than a mating adapter.

What pisses me off is the apparent joy camera manufacturers still seem to take in using nonstandard terminal connectors. SAMSUNG, I'M LOOKING AT YOU! £14 for a fucking replacement USB cable is not fucking funny!

I'm glad most phone manufacturers have got the hint that we'd all like to be able to carry just ONE cable for our phones and our portable hard drives! And speaking of that - what's with this USB3 bullshit?? They look like anorexic SATA connectors!

No Regrets For Joysticks

[winphreak]

I survived the era of the joystick port. Usually, it was on a soundcard, or the fancy motherboards. When USB 1 took over the joystick market, I was happy. If I plugged it in, I got confirmation it was ready to go, and it did.

It's not like gamepads based on USB ever took off after the late 90s.

Re:No Regrets For Joysticks

[Blaskowicz]

What happened is interest and support for joysticks died off, except on strict flight simulators.
There were some fun games to play with a joystick in the 90s such as Descent, Xwing and any random tank or chopper game you came over.
USB gamepad I'ven seen them but a USB joystick, I don't think I've ever seen one. So I kind of miss it. BTW you often didn't need a driver with ISA sound cards, both for the sound function under DOS and to run the joystick. It worked and that's all.

What has it replaced?

[Anonymous Coward]

* Specialty chargers
* PS/2 connectors
* Game ports
* Serial ports
* Parallel ports
* External SCSI
* eSATA
* FireWire
* System Bus-based Expansion Chassis
* System Bus-based external drive units
* Floppy/CD-RW/DVD-+RW-RAM/BD-E (use a thumbdrive instead)
* Specialty datalinks

Pretty much everything

[Anonymous Coward]

For me its replaced serial, parallel ports. I gave up connecting the printer via parallel port a long time ago. Its bulky, fussy, everything has to be powered off and grounded so things don't go 'funny'. And with usb, its all easy. I connect high volume I/O devices that get data from long distances -hundreds of miles and not over the internet-, and it works very well. I don't have floppy disks anymore, nor do I have much use for floppy disks anymore. The keyboard I'm typing this on is connected via usb. So is the mouse. USB2 is useful enough so that I can collect data from very remote (and high altitude) sources. Sure someone might want to replace all of usb with something else, but its still the most common and most versatile connection on my computer.

USB is a trainwreck

[BeCre8iv]

After the death of xp - some pretty hi-end synth/sequencer gear was bricked due to lack of USB drivers on a modern OS.

USB was over-engineered and chosen over firewire by idiots. The ony good to come out of it is phone charger standardization - except some chargers are nonstandard voltage with interchangeable plugs, resulting in ignorant USB users who then blame the exploding 4v device instead of their 6v+ charger and their own stupidity..

Stereo Jack ( -- )

[hcs_$reboot]

USB not good as the good old jack for listening to music . Sometimes the quality is inferior (because the USB converters are cheap), and other annoyances. see this informational thread for more important and irrelevant information.

Re:USB is a trainwreck

[ledow]

Firewire specs require arbitrary memory access via DMA, outside control of the driver or processor - It's a security nightmare.

It used different connectors over its life - it's not backwards compatible.

Outside of video, it basically never became popular for any other significant task. The networking side was short-lived and removed from Windows before Vista even came out. I've never seen other FireWire peripherals except storage and video.

Literally, FireWire never had a chance because it never tried to be cheap or ubiquitous. And USB can basically do anything that FireWire was originally intended for.

FireWire was dead nearly a decade ago. Give it up.

Laptop charger

[Anonymous Coward]

Not enough power yet (there is a proposed spec, but not yet widely adopted).

USB is the real legacy port

[TeknoHog]

USB 3 is a completely different design from USB 2. Thus to maintain the illusion of universality, v3 comes with v2 pins bolted on the side. The idea of "legacy free" was that you replace a bunch of older connectors with a single new type, which is clearly not happening with USB. I guess in the future we use "USB" for everything including CPU sockets, though in reality it's a chimera of 10 different ports bolted together for the sake of universality.

http://iki.fi/teknohog/rants/u...

Two things of note

[Anonymous Coward]

1. When the USB org started and wanted people to shift to making USB peripherals, the price for a USB vendor ID was only(hah!) about $1000USD, but it's now up to $4K USD. Why is that? Why the increasing barrier to entry?

2. the earlier post never claimed Microsoft created the USB spec, only that Microsoft put it into the PC99 spec, and at that time put hardware developers on notice that the serial and parallel ports were slated fro elimination from the standard PC. Go back and read the docs from that time; Microsoft wanted those ports GONE and told people they would not support Windows on PCs that had those ports at some future point.

This PC99-spec-driven shift to close-down the preciously open PC architecture was at around the time the standard ISA card slots (which were also patent and royalty-free and very easy to interface to) were eliminated in favor of the patented PCI slots. Before this shift, any reasonably competent guy with a soldering iron could buy a proto board (double-sided perf board with plated-through 0.10" spaced holes, shaped for the PC with ISA card edge fingers) for something like $20 from places like Digikey and Jameco and make a circuit that could be plugged into a PC and used to control/monitor anything. Those circuits were directly controlled by the CPU in the PC without the lag and indirection of going through a USB stack and controller on the PC then through another micro and USB stack on the other end. There were an huge number of products available from many companies that were on ISA cards as a result.

Re:Two things of note

[unixisc]

PCI was opened up to a PCI-SIG, which is why you had initially DEC, and later other vendors like Sun adapt it as the bus within their workstations and servers. How did their replacement cause issues? Besides, today, wouldn't most of the original PCI patents have expired? People don't have to design to PCI-X, you know. But the issue w/ ISA/EISA was that they consumed interrupts, which was why not just Microsoft, but Intel too wanted them gone.

Unitasking cables are dumb design

[sjbe]

We no longer need ANY CABLE for data.

What universe are you living in? I run a company that manufactures wire harnesses. If we didn't need data cables I wouldn't have a job anymore. If you are one of these deluded people who thinks we can do everything through wireless then you couldn't be more wrong. The need for data cables will be around long after you and I are gone. What we don't need is unnecessary, redundant, uni-tasking cables. Single function power cords cannot die soon enough for mobile devices.

It's only where POWER and DATA go over the same cable that we end up with horrible proprietary crap!

Come again? USB isn't "horrible proprietary crap" and it has power and data. Basically none of the cables we are talking about are proprietary EXCEPT for stupid vendor supplied power connectors. Perhaps you aren't old enough to remember every frickin' cell phone vendor shipping their own unique power cable. Now you basically have either micro-USB or if you are using Apple, lighting. Prior to USB-C so did every laptop vendor. HUGELY wasteful with no commensurate performance benefit.

Laptops have had that forever... Their simple barrel connectors can pull 200W+, no trouble at all.

Who gives a shit? What mobile device are you using that needs to pull 200W? My desktop computer doesn't even use that much power. Single function cables are idiotic, wasteful and unnecessary in the vast majority of cases. Particularly ones that only one vendor uses. The barrel connectors used on many laptops are particularly annoying. Having to carry a special quasi-unique power cord around everywhere is idiotic design.

And no USB connector will ever be 1/100th as durable as a tough, simple, basic barrel connector.

Demonstrably not true and completely missing the point. Barrel connectors have their uses but powering a laptop, tablet, cellphone or other mobile device should not be one of them. It is wasteful, unnecessary, and provides no meaningful performance benefit. The ONLY time a unitasking cable should be used with a mobile device is if there is a undeniable performance benefit, it will never be unplugged, and there is no multi-function substitute available.

Re:Unitasking cables are dumb design

[evilviper]

If you are one of these deluded people who thinks we can do everything through wireless then you couldn't be more wrong.

I never said that, and your feigned outrage as you distort what I said isn't helping your argument.

When it comes to phones, yes, we could eliminate data cables. We certainly don't need them often, so it's ridiculous to pretend we need data (rarely used) and power (frequently needed) combined.

Perhaps you aren't old enough to remember every frickin' cell phone vendor shipping their own unique power cable.

Yes I am... and they were ALL combined power + data. If they didn't tack data onto it, they could have used simple barrel connectors. That's how you end up with proprietary connectors... tacking-on new mis-features.

Who gives a shit?

You do, genius. Don't you remember what you JUST SAID?

"USB just needs to settle on a single un-keyed connector that can carry enough power to run a laptop" -sjbe

Single function cables are idiotic, wasteful and unnecessary in the vast majority of cases.

No, in fact we've got decades of history to prove they're the best options, all-around, every time.

Demonstrably not true and completely missing the point.

Nobody has ever demonstrated that, because you're spouting nonsense. Tiny pins can't take a fraction the force of big solid metal barrels. And you're missing the point that broken USB cables, and worse, jacks, are a HUGE and ridiculously common failure mode, resulting in tons of money being wasted, and a great many phones being thrown away for no other reason.

Having to carry a special quasi-unique power cord around everywhere is idiotic design.

Laptop connectors don't have many variations, and they could easily settle on a single one, if just a fraction the government interest that was put on phones to get micro-USB MANDATED, was directed towards other devices like laptops.

Barrel connectors have their uses but powering a laptop, tablet, cellphone or other mobile device should not be one of them. It is wasteful, unnecessary, and provides no meaningful performance benefit.

You're actually describing USB... It has its uses, but it's a clumsy and fragile piece of shit as a power supply. Barrel connectors are nearly the perfect design for just such a task. Hell, the headphone jacks one cell phones tablets and laptos, which nobody ever has trouble with, is proof enough of the durability of such a simple connector design.

Lightining cables don't cost $20

[sjbe]

Instead of buying $5 USB cables I get to buy lightening cables from Apple for $20 that fail after a month of flexing.

I just got a bunch of Lightning cables from Monoprice for $3.99 each. You only pay $20 for a lightning cable if you are an idiot and can't be bothered to look for a better deal.

Replaced my old fax modem, also printers

[shoor]

I have an old telephone line serial modem made by Practical Peripherals that also had faxing ability. Occasionally I do still find myself wanting to send a fax, but it had gotten to the point where only one old computer still had a serial port, and using it even on that seemed like a dicey affair. (I'm not sure if the hardware was going South, or if support for serial ports in the software wasn't as good or what.) Anyway, I finally broke down and for a few bucks bought a usb fax modem, and it works well and smoothly. The only thing I miss is the song of the phone modem as it makes its connection since the new gadget doesn't have a speaker.

The other thing replaced is the parallel port for printers. I still have an old fashioned printer cable and a printer that has both parallel and usb connections on it. So, one time, just for grins, I tried to use it to connect that same old computer that had a parallel port, and I couldn't get the system to recognize the printer, whereas when connecting by usb it's detected automatically. (I vaguely remember in the old days, one had to go through various incantations to get linux to recognize a printer, I must still have my notes around somewhere, but too much work to try to dig them out.)

See how long USB lasts

[tie_guy_matt]

RS-232 (classic serial ports) were introduced in 1962 in order to connect teletype machines. Although USB has replaced them for most desktop and home use, there simplicity means that they certainly are still used in many different applications. USB is nice and all that but let's come back in another 50 years or so and see if they are still used for much of anything.

Re:USB is a trainwreck

[Anonymous Coward]

Firewire specs require arbitrary memory access via DMA, outside control of the driver or processor - It's a security nightmare.

Firewire is a 32-bit bus. It requires access to the bottom 4GB of RAM. So it's easy to store everything requiring real security above this, and only common stuff below 4GB. For instance, my company (in the Fortune 100) stores all encryption keys above 4GB. They've been using 64-bit operating systems and at least 8GB of RAM for years on all laptops requiring Firewire.

Re:USB is a trainwreck

[Anonymous Coward]

After the death of xp - some pretty hi-end synth/sequencer gear was bricked due to lack of USB drivers on a modern OS.

Sounds like somebody doesn't know that you can just unplug ethernet, make a backup of eveything and have your xp machine work forever

Re:USB is a trainwreck

[Ash-Fox]

For instance, my company (in the Fortune 100) stores all encryption keys above 4GB.

How did your company prevent RNG analysis?

Beowulf cluster cluster

[Anonymous Coward]

When my Beowulf cluster messed up, I called it a Beowulf cluster cluster because my momma taught me not to say "Beowulf cluster cluster$BLEEP" in public.

USB Serial - Too much brain for its own good

[treczoks]

We have an application where we still need a real serial connection. USB serial adapters have too much brain for their own good, and don't cut it in realtime scenarios.

And from the embedded point of view, a UART can bed one with a handful of registers, maybe an interrupt, and a few lines of code, even in assembly. For talking USB, I need a whole protocol stack with hundreds of things I never ever need.