On Thu, Jul 1, 2010 at 11:31 AM, Tom Osborne <w7why@verizon.net> wrote:
> If someone could tell me the 'advantage' of USB over
> serial ports, I'd like to know. I know USB is the wave of the future (till
> something else comes along), but why? Maybe I'm missing something.
>
For the majority of stuff hams do there is probably no big advantage
to USB, and sometimes there are disadvantages (driver issues, OS
dependency, etc.) But the migration to USB (and away from RS-232) is
all about speed. Speed doesn't really matter that much for rig control
or RTTY, but the advent of digital cameras and music players has made
the RS-232 serial port useless for data transfer. I can transfer the
Red Hot Chili Peppers double album "Stadium Arcadium" to my MP3 player
via USB in less than 10 seconds, but that same album would take over 2
hours to transfer even at the fastest RS-232 speed. Likewise, I can
pull 100 photos off of my Nikon D300 in less than a minute, but with
RS-232 we'd be looking at 14 hours. And nobody would put up with
RS-232 data rates for printers and scanners. Who wants to wait hours
for a photo to print?
In addition, USB can supply a fair amount of current (per the USB
spec) for powering or charging devices, something that was never more
than a kludge with RS-232 devices. (You can sometimes "steal" power
from the RTS or DTR lines of an RS-232 port, but never more than a few
milliamperes.)
Granted USB is not (yet) a big advantage in the ham world, and in fact
most USB ham peripherals are just USB-to-RS-232 ports in disguise, but
outside the ham world USB is what makes modern gadgets practical to
use.
73,
Doug K4DSP
P.S. From an embedded systems developer's world (my world) USB is a
pain in the butt. RS-232 is still easier to design in and program for.
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