USB - The Current status of this essential of Modern Computing

CountMike · Nov 17, 2022

I remmeber when first USB standard came out and it together with Firewire which is quite similar was hailed as revolution but it took 10 years (late 1990s) to se real proliferation of USB connected devices while Firewire with superior performance and limited number of connectors all but disappeared

Davy49 · Nov 17, 2022

CountMike said:
I have some of each one with my PC, USB2 10 ports. USB3 x4, USB3 1st gen x2 and USB3.1 2nd gen (USB 3.2) x1. USB3.1 1st gen and 2nd gen are in form of USB-C and rest are USB-A (female) type connectors which are all downward compatible to USB1/1.1 (Legacy) mode.
I like USB-C best as the are reversible, also fastest in this configuration but adapters are available from any to any.
Cables and adapters, USB-A to USB-B (printer), USB-A to USB-C and USB-C to USB-C (phone and SATA3 to USB3 and 2 adapter for 2.5" HDDs and SSDs.
Others have USB-A cables built in, KB, Mouse, Scanners, Disk station, BT, WiFi, Camera, Microphone and a 5v LED light.

Hi,
According to your statement about what connections you currently have on your computer it sounds like you have a very nice system with which you have a multitude of available options available at your disposal. Thanks for posting this information, of course by reading that it put me in a form of dream world in wishing for a newer computer with a lot more bells & whistles, but since retiring in 12/2018 things have changed and priorities have been set, at least for me my main priority is my overall health which overall has seemingly taken somewhat of a more downward turn lately (I'm 73+ years old).
David

CountMike · Nov 17, 2022

Davy49 said:
Hi,
According to your statement about what connections you currently have on your computer it sounds like you have a very nice system with which you have a multitude of available options available at your disposal. Thanks for posting this information, of course by reading that it put me in a form of dream world in wishing for a newer computer with a lot more bells & whistles, but since retiring in 12/2018 things have changed and priorities have been set, at least for me my main priority is my overall health which overall has seemingly taken somewhat of a more downward turn lately (I'm 73+ years old).
David

I turned 75 this July, retired over 10 years ago and now when I'm limited in other activities specially after getting over Covid 19 so I have much more time for computers and most is centered around it. It's my communication, TV, music and video center so investing in it is priority. I rarely make or buy whole PC but keep on upgrading little by little. Lol. probably have at least few screws for my 1980s Pc.

johnlgalt · Nov 17, 2022

Ghot said:
I think they should just make something like a 10 or 15pin SATA connector.
10 or 15pins should be enough for anything. They're also skinny enough for things like smart phones.
They're keyed, and they seem to stay connected.
And the bandwidth or frequency supported by a standard is of the standard, not of the cable.

We need a standardized connector. It's long past time that we had one.

Agreed. The issue is that the connector is only part of the problem, though. Having the actual protocol standard not include 'optional' features is just as necessary - something that neither HDMI.org nor USB-IF (USB.org) seem to have figured out yet.

CountMike said:
To have less pins on ATX some connections would have to be moved to motherboard, some OEM manufacturers have 20 12, 10 or even 8 contacts. Problem could be with traces in the PCB, it's easier to put more and/or thicker wires from PSU. Same thing goes for GPUs which increasingly use more power. Last edition Nvidia GTX 4090 have "special" connectors for which few PSU are made and adapters for them are melting from all that power required. It could have been avoided if they just stuck with old 2x8pin. setup as most PSUs already have them

There are services online that do this sort of thing now, that you can design and mock up a PCB and then they will print it for you, in both low and high volume.

CountMike said:
Best part of USB-C is it's two sided, I deliberately placed all USB-A ports so they are all turned one way but still miss every now and then.
EU is moving toward requesting all cell phones to have USB-C for uniformity.

While true, there are niche USB Type A cables that are double sided, I have a pair of them. The biggest problem with them is that the little PCB wafer that the connectors reside on are very thin, which allows for the reversibility, but also makes them super delicate, and easy to break. In fact, if I can find it, I have a Type A to Type B micro, both ends of which are reversible (some dev team at XDA Developers were selling them several years back, and I grabbed a pair of them to support their development efforts in Android ROMs).

But have you actually take n a look at the connector specs?

Taken from Document Library | USB-IF

24 pins.

But if you want to see what they want people to say about USB 4? See https://www.usb.org/sites/default/f...t_and_packaging_guidelines_final_20220928.pdf

Haydon · May 1, 2023

The screenshot below is from my desktop machine > Device Manager. I am surprised that I have so many USB controllers. All I know is that I am supposed to plug in my Keyboard and Mouse in the back (or front) because that will plug them in a USB Root Hub. I see that my printer has USB Printing Support, but is there a preferred port for plugging the printer into? I have an external USB hub, which USB controller in the list below supports that? If I plug in a PCIe card to get more USB ports, will I see another entry in the screenshot below? In more general terms, can somebody explain the screenshot below?

CountMike · May 2, 2023

Printers, Scanners amd some other devices don't like USB3 and up. Most desktop PCs have top 2 USB2 ports specialized for KB and mouse and look for then during P.O.S.T. first.
USB HUB is actually USB control chip not a "Device" plugged in, Similar with USB eXtensible Host controller although those and super speed USB hubs are now integrated in Chipset and have direct access to CPU making them so fast.
Some are just SW emulated hubs.
Active External hubs cab shift the load from port to port and should show each available port separately as if it was on the motherboard. Ordinary passive external hubs share all ports resources and power with the USB port they are connected to.
USB Printing support is purely a virtual port to support emulation for Parallel, Serial, network etc. printers

wimorrison · May 2, 2023

Having watched the first video my brain hurts

Davy49 · May 2, 2023

CountMike said:
I turned 75 this July, retired over 10 years ago and now when I'm limited in other activities specially after getting over Covid 19 so I have much more time for computers and most is centered around it. It's my communication, TV, music and video center so investing in it is priority. I rarely make or buy whole PC but keep on upgrading little by little. Lol. probably have at least few screws for my 1980s Pc.

Your comment actually makes me feel better about myself as I'm currently 74+ years old, my wife & I were fortunate enough not to be affected by the covid 19 virus, both of our adult sons weren't so lucky. I keep thinking that I'd like to purchase a much newer & more modern windows computer, but I know by doing so & the way technology is changing at a much more rapid pace I might in fact be wasting my money by doing so at this time.

CountMike · May 2, 2023

Davy49 said:
Your comment actually makes me feel better about myself as I'm currently 74+ years old, my wife & I were fortunate enough not to be affected by the covid 19 virus, both of our adult sons weren't so lucky. I keep thinking that I'd like to purchase a much newer & more modern windows computer, but I know by doing so & the way technology is changing at a much more rapid pace I might in fact be wasting my money by doing so at this time.

It's all about what you are using computer for. Chasing technology just for sake of it means you'll never catch up. There's always a generation or two waiting for them to make enough money of last one and than spring out "New and improved".

Flashorn · Aug 5, 2023

CountMike said:
I rarely make or buy whole PC but keep on upgrading little by little

Mike, I remember you saying the same thing when we were on Sevenforum.
Really hope you're feeling better.

Ghot · Aug 5, 2023

CountMike said:
I rarely make or buy whole PC but keep on upgrading little by little

Yep. I do the same.
There's no way to ever get ahead of the tech advance.

jimbo45 · Aug 6, 2023

Ghot said:
I miss the days when a "standard" only involved "one" thing, not a bucketful.

Like... let's take a platinum bar and put two lines on it, exactly one meter apart. And we'll call that... a meter.

And then it expands / contracts depending on temperature at the time !!! (and whether deg C , deg F or deg K) plus where do you get your metre length from !!! - I think the whole kybosh is now measured using sub atomic particle properties these days or the frequency of pulses coming from a pulsar / magnetar .

cheers
jimbo

CountMike · Aug 6, 2023

jimbo45 said:
And then it expands / contracts depending on temperature at the time !!! (and whether deg C , deg F or deg K) plus where do you get your metre length from !!! - I think the whole kybosh is now measured using sub atomic particle properties these days or the frequency of pulses coming from a pulsar / magnetar .

cheers
jimbo

Meter/Metre was derived as a part of (then estimated) Earth circumference by French scientists, not some imagined length.

jimbo45 · Aug 6, 2023

CountMike said:
Meter/Metre was derived as a part of (then estimated) Earth circumference by French scientists, not some imagined length.

Hi there
Original definition yes --but all these units have been redefined in the last few years though. For instance time -- which is why every so often one has a correction of "leap seconds". Although with time the one unvarying constant is "there's never enough of it".

Cheers
jimbo

CountMike · Aug 6, 2023

jimbo45 said:
Hi there
Original definition yes --but all these units have been redefined in the last few years though. For instance time -- which is why every so often one has a correction of "leap seconds". Although with time the one unvarying constant is "there's never enough of it".

Cheers
jimbo

Not time but time measuring and division, originally derived from Earth's orbit and rotation. Main problem is that it's not constant and measuring units always have to be readjusted against some other measured constants like Cesium clocks.

hdmi · Aug 6, 2023

jimbo45 said:
Original definition yes --but all these units have been redefined in the last few years though.

Got proof?

jimbo45 said:
For instance time -- which is why every so often one has a correction of "leap seconds".

Now you are only talking about how many seconds is a year. Coordinated Universal Time - Wikipedia

jimbo45 · Aug 6, 2023

hdmi said:
Got proof?

Now you are only talking about how many seconds is a year. Coordinated Universal Time - Wikipedia

Over a period it soon mounts up -- go back to history and look at riots when Julian Calendar abandoned for the current one -- correction needed for around 11 days -- people rioted because they thought "they were being robbed of 11 days life" !!!!.

Did a Calendar Change Cause Riots in England?

Did the Calendar Act of 1752 actually make English protesters chant, “Give us back our 11 days!”?

www.britannica.com

@hdmi

Building upon these and other advances, the meter was redefined by international agreement in 1983 as the length of the path traveled by light in a vacuum in 1/299,792,458 of a second. This definition also locked the speed of light at 299,792,458 meters per second in a vacuum.9 May 2019

Cheers
jimbo

CountMike · Aug 6, 2023

hdmi said:
Got proof?

Now you are only talking about how many seconds is a year. Coordinated Universal Time - Wikipedia

That's time on Earth, it's different thing from absolute time. Absolute time units are essential for frequency measurement and definition.

jimbo45 · Aug 6, 2023

CountMike said:
That's time on Earth, it's different thing from absolute time. Absolute time units are essential for frequency measurement and definition.

Not quite true -- if you are inside the event horizon of a black hole time goes for you just as "normal" but to an observer on the outside you would be stationary. Time changes the nearer you get to the speed of light.

That's why sat nav data has to make (albeit small) corrections depending on the position of the satellite and it's altitude -- radio transmissions are at light speed. Not so important for domestic users - but for military who need accuracy to with a tiny area its significant.

Not sure all this physics stuff is good for the brain at Breakfast time on a Sunday morning though. !!!!

Cheers
jimbo

hdmi · Aug 6, 2023

CountMike said:
That's time on Earth, it's different thing from absolute time. Absolute time units are essential for frequency measurement and definition.