[OT] USB KVM switches

From: Tom Jennings <tomj_at_wps.com>
Date: Wed Feb 2 12:11:46 2005

I like USB. Of course I don't develop for it :-)

It's not supposed to be easy to develop for, but easy to use. It
rarely screws up -- reporting some instance of a problem with it
in this list is not enough to condemn it out of hand. It's silly.

* It never requires adapters.
* It provides (just adequate) device ID info for OSs to find the driver for.
* Throughput is excellent (for most things).
* It's bidirectional.
* You never have to worry about connector sex.
* Connectors are utterly standardized!
* It (largely) manages it's own address space.
* It translarently supports multiple identical devices (if the
driver does). Multiple pointing devices, multiple keyboards is routine.
Try that with serial printers!
* It provides enough electrical power for many products, increasing
with Moore's law.
* There is only two variants of it and they are (in my experience) upward
compatible (and maybe backwards).
* It really does handle everything from keyboards to hard disks with
one architecture.
* It is not made for "end users" to hack.
* We are not end users.

No one ever built commercial computer gear for the likes of us. It
was mainly historical confluences that made computer interface
available to people w/o full laboratories. MOST computer
interfaces are reasonably inscrutable; SMB, SNA, ethernet,
whatever from whenever. Note I said reasonable; I know there are
people here who could make an SMB interface from TTL but your
criteria isn't the manufacturers. I see no one complaining about
how complex ethernet is to make hardware for; you buy a card or a
chip.

I hack hardware, and I cannot (easily) hack USB it's true. My
projects are serial, usually, good old RS232 (and variants).


Apples and oranges. It's simply different.

Contemporize, man, contemporize! [Can you name that quote?]
Received on Wed Feb 02 2005 - 12:11:46 GMT