15 Mar
2005
15 Mar
'05
4:26 p.m.
Vintage Computer Festival wrote:
On Tue, 15 Mar 2005, Dwight K. Elvey wrote:
For purposes of connecting old storage to new computers, Barry's
point stands. The discussion here doesn't really include development
hardware, low-level controllers or embedded systems. If I were going to
design hardware for a "next-gen compaticard", it would not be on a
serial port.
I won't argue that serial is underrated, and it's true that it's not
disappearing, but a rising percentage of commodity desktop systems come
with no serial interface.
It's the usual story that numbers, not quality, define success. USB
is going to be "it" for a good long while.
I tend to agree with you. We should be thinking
this way.
Still, I believe that development work should be done in
an environment that is handy and convenient. The USB is
just a machine interconnect. One just has to keep in mind
what the final product will be like. In other words, don't
lock the design into one specific format.
The only issue I have with USB is that it requires drivers
for each machine it is connected to. These have to be
specific to the USB device we use to interface with.
RS-232 is generic enough that we could run things from
text files using simple terminal modes on almost any machine.
I dispute Barry's assertion that serial is going away. Perhaps in
consumer products it will be supplanted by USB. But in development
products and applications, and low level controller and embedded system
devices, it'll be around for quite a while yet.
I'd argue that the serial port is the most under-rated device is
computing. It is the most widely deployed communcations protocol and
allows computers 1 month old to connect and transfer data to computers
that are over 30 years old. As for Dwight's main argument that the interface
is not the main focus, I
agree.
Just to throw a monkey wrench into the mix, we might consider
ethernet. Even more universal than USB, doesn't exclude older systems,
and only comes in three common connectors (that I can think of. A lot
of the appliance-oriented microcontrollers and CPUs now have builtin
ethernet, right? With microcoded TCP stacks and even DHCP clients.
Plug your 8" floppy drives into your *network*....
I think that while the hardware costs would be higher, the
development issues would be greatly reduced.
Doc