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posted by Fnord666 on Sunday December 03 2017, @08:06AM   Printer-friendly
from the stand-on-your-head dept.

So that's why:

The USB paradox is one of the most familiar experiences of the digital age. Every time you try to plug in a USB cord, it seems like you always get it wrong on the first try. It doesn't matter how much attention you pay to the plug or the cord or the icons on the cord. It's always wrong.

And there's a good reason for that! In an interview published Thursday by DesignNews, Intel's Ajay Bhatt spoke at length about why the ubiquitous technology has been so infuriating for so long. Bhatt was a member of the team that developed USB technology. Even at the start of development, they knew that making the connector flippable would be a better user experience in the long run. But doing so would require twice the wiring and more circuitry, which would increase costs.

"If you have a lot of cost up front for an unproven technology it might not take off. So that was our fear. You have to be really cost conscious when you start out," Bhatt said.


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  • (Score: 4, Informative) by shrewdsheep on Sunday December 03 2017, @11:21AM (8 children)

    by shrewdsheep (5215) on Sunday December 03 2017, @11:21AM (#604614)

    USB started out replacing RS-232 and parallel interfaces compared to which USB 1.0 was > 10x faster. The speed bumps came as a result of competition with Apple upping the ante with firewire/thunderbolt.

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  • (Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 03 2017, @01:56PM (6 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 03 2017, @01:56PM (#604646)

    USB is useless compared to RS-232. Ever tried screwing-in your USB connector? You can do that with RS-232 and parallel port. Now things can just fall out when they are needed plugged-in.

    Also, RS-232 cannot harm your computer because of how it works. USB is a virus-carrier which should be considered hostile hardware.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 03 2017, @05:04PM (2 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 03 2017, @05:04PM (#604708)

      Serial port malware now:

      I'm going to plug in this USB drive I found. What's this 'composite device' mean? Hey, it is controlling my keyboard. Hey, it just opend its own drive and ran software. WTF IS GOING ON? Better disconnect this before something bad happens.... OH NOES! Where did my files go?

      Serial port malware then:

      I'm going to plug in this serial drive I found. Hmm, gotta find a free IRQ. Wait, why does this thing want so much memory and two DMA channels? Wait according to this, it needs IRQ 1 and 15? WTF is going on? Better disconnect this before something bad happens.... PHEW, All my files safe and sound.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 04 2017, @09:00AM (1 child)

        by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 04 2017, @09:00AM (#604951)

        You don't think people would start noticing something fishy when their RS-232 hardware comes not with an RS-232 connector, but with an ISA connector?

        RS-232 doesn't need - or even know about - IRQs and DMA channels, that's only the serial port card.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 05 2017, @05:11AM

          by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 05 2017, @05:11AM (#605513)

          WHOOSH!

    • (Score: 2) by Knowledge Troll on Sunday December 03 2017, @05:45PM (2 children)

      by Knowledge Troll (5948) on Sunday December 03 2017, @05:45PM (#604728) Homepage Journal

      USB is also based on a polling based model instead of an interrupt based model. The fallout from that decision is a bit of increased latency which makes some usage of a parallel port attached to a USB bus impossible. The latency can cause issues with the RS232 connection too depending on what is being carried over it.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 04 2017, @09:02AM (1 child)

        by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 04 2017, @09:02AM (#604952)

        Yup, I tried replaced an ISA serial card with a USB to RS-232 converter, and found out it was useless. The time for the flow control signals to propagate via the USB hardware to the OS is longer than it takes to overflow the buffers in the hardware, and of course the converter contains a bog standard serial chip that doesn't handle flow control internally.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 05 2017, @03:55PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 05 2017, @03:55PM (#605678)

          There's a lot of really shitty USB<->UART adapters on the market.

          The good ones are made by FTDI.

          But then there's a lot of really shitty counterfeit FTDI parts on the market, so make sure you buy from a legit distributor.

  • (Score: 2) by wisnoskij on Sunday December 03 2017, @08:34PM

    by wisnoskij (5149) <{jonathonwisnoski} {at} {gmail.com}> on Sunday December 03 2017, @08:34PM (#604785)

    And also use cases. Mice, keyboards, printers, they developed USB to the specifications best suited to its use cases.