How USB Works: From 'Plug and Pray' to Being Everywhere

[neeyik]

Connecting and powering our everyday gadgets and peripherals, USB is everywhere, but how does it work? Learn about its inner workings and how the USB port has managed to survive for so long.

Read the full article here.

https://www.techspot.com/article/2659-how-usb-works/

 

[DSirius]

Such a pleasure to read this article.
Congratulation again for taking us into this amazing USB journey and also make it fascinating to follow.
It has all ingredients for a delicious "hardware pie". Technical info, clear presentation, and some poetic and humor flavors.

Also you helped us to have a better and crystal clear picture of USB struggle in learning the alphabet, by adopting all those letters and numbers too "random".

 

[fadingfool]

I remember when PS/2 ports were the "new thing" - previously keyboards would have a 5 pin DIN (DIN - Deutsches Institut für Normung - 1950's standards) and the mouse would have been plugged into a COM port (except the Amstrad PC's used an Atari 9 pin for their mouse).

 

[p51d007]

Ahhh the days of com ports, IRQ's, AT commands. (don't even get me started on writing your own config.sys or autoexec.bat files).

 

[captaincranky]

I remember when PS/2 ports were the "new thing" - previously keyboards would have a 5 pin DIN (DIN - Deutsches Institut für Normung - 1950's standards) and the mouse would have been plugged into a COM port (except the Amstrad PC's used an Atari 9 pin for their mouse).

Ironically, the lack of PS-2 ports stymied people trying to install Windows 7 into later mobos. (Intel 170 and up). While the mobos still had one com port, it was coded purple/green, which meant you could use a mouse or a keyboard, but not both.

So, those without a DVD drive, and using a USB drive for the install, found that the install quit, when the OS crossed over from USB 2. to USB 3.

Gigabyte boards offered a workaround, by a setting in UEFI BIOS named, "USB 3.0 hand off". This supplied USB 3.0 drivers enbedded in BIOS, then handed off control to the OS after the install was complete.

 

[nnguy2]

Great article! Thank for the trip down memory lane! (no pun intended)

 

[fadingfool]

Ahhh the days of com ports, IRQ's, AT commands. (don't even get me started on writing your own config.sys or autoexec.bat files).

and doing the above when all you had to use was edlin........