Comment 4TSH Re: Legacy

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Legacy (Score: 2, Interesting)

by evilviper@pipedot.org on 2015-03-10 07:09 (#4M8C)

Anybody remember computers in the late 90's?

2 9-pin RS-232 serial ports (older mice, modems, etc)
2 PS/2 ports (keyboard/mouse)
1 25-pin IEEE 1284 Parallel port (printers, storage devices, even ethernet adapters)
Often a SCSI-1 port (scanners, external drives)
Game ports (controllers)
Sometimes even MIDI ports
Often firewire ports.
etc.

And then a couple USB (v1.1) ports, which was the most useless of all... Nothing made for it, except maybe your new mouse using an adapter. Slower than parallel ports, lots of CPU-saping overhead. Couldn't boot off of it (for many years). etc.

Re: Legacy (Score: 2, Interesting)

by billshooterofbul@pipedot.org on 2015-03-11 13:41 (#4QBP)

Yes, the best part of USB was getting away from PS/2 ports. Those stupid pins kept breaking off. I lost many a good mouse to broken pins. USB is much sturdier of a connection,

Re: Legacy (Score: 1)

by evilviper@pipedot.org on 2015-03-12 21:21 (#4TSH)

the best part of USB was getting away from PS/2 ports. Those stupid pins kept breaking off.
I've never broken a PS2 pin, though I've seen it happen a couple times over a decade. PS2 supplied more power than USB, and even now, you can hit a key on a PS2 keyboard to wake-up a computer, while I've still never seen that working with USB keyboards.

USB offers more flexibility than PS2 did (monitors and keyboards with built-in USB hubs are convenient), but some good features were lost in the process, too.

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