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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: 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.