Mac Mini

USB seems to me to be the interfacing equivalent of certain GUI-based systems, in that it makes easy jobs trivial and difficult jobs almost impossible. USB probably works fine if you want to do what the manufacturers intended. But if, like me, you want to hack about, it appears it would really get in the way... I think I've mentioned before that my old-ish HP calculators have built-in RS232 ports. HP's intention was that you linked these to a PC and saved/loaded stuff (there's kermit and Xmodem in ROM on the calculator). But they work equally well to link to a serial printer or to a home-made data logger, or... The replacement has a USB port. It probably works fine with a PC to load/save programs and data. But it won't link to a printer or to a data logger or.... Since learnign how to wire an RS232 cable, I've never had any problems with RS232 interfaces if the documentation is complete (and if it's not, it's not that hard to work out what signals are needed). Of course the fact that none of my computers have, or could have, a USB interface is another matter.... Oddly, not being a programmer, I much prefer a command-line driven system to a GUI. -tony