21 May
2020
21 May
'20
6:42 p.m.
On Thu, May 21, 2020 at 10:20 AM Eric Smith via cctalk <
cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
IMNSHO, there's a special place in hell reserved
for those who have
designed equipment to (ab)use modular connectors other than for telephone
lines and 10BASEx Ethernet, and I really think a better connector should
have been chosen for 10BASEx.
The whole concept of "if the plug fits, it will at least not blow up" is
kind of a late invention.
And I'm amazed when this actually holds true in situations where I wouldn't
quite expect that to be the case (e.g. all those electrically not quite
compatible PCI/PCI-X/PCIe variants that have coded notches to prevent you
from frying your computer/card. Except that you can
stick a PCI card
backwards into a PCIe slot)
DEC using MMJ may get a pass because they at least attempted to prevent
connecting the wrong stuff together.
Any ideas why it took so much longer for keyboard interfaces to converge
than most other peripherals? Display interfaces, HDDs/floppies/tapes etc.,
serial ports, and even mice converged on only a few variants more or less
the moment they became commonplace.
I'd really like some first hand insight into why anyone would want to
invent a new interface/protocol from scratch every time they
start developing a new machine (I'm mostly talking about the "simple async
serial protocol sending up/down events" kind). Luckily there are only 12
different ways to wire a 4P4C, but there exist way more incompatible
keyboards using that connector. Is it really easier to develop an
incompatible serial keyboard interface from scratch than to re-use one that
already exists?
[actually, I kinda know, because of course it's easier to do a one-off and
not care about documentation, licensing, extensibility, or
forwards/backwards compatibility]