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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?
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.
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.
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.
like usb3?
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.
...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.
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.
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.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
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.
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.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
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.