And that's the whole point. In order to install serial ports, you had
to set jumpers on your card, open your computer, install the board,
and change BIOS settings. Yikes! What percentage of computer
users could do that by themselves?
USB won't be used to add serial ports, it will replace serial ports.
Once peripherals are on USB, you won't need serial ports.
Basically all new motherboards and all new computers support
USB, as do the latest versions of the MS operating systems. I
think you'll see it take off now. The original versions of Win95
didn't support it, although it has for a year now. But, manufacturers
can now be confident that any computer with USB and Win98 will
support the bus. You're starting to see monitors with hubs built
in and I think the peripherals will take off over the next year.
Intel produces a complicated technical document which details
their latest reference PC. It specifies the technical details of busses,
memory, etc. to make sure all the PC's are compatible with the
latest Intel processors and chipsets. Did you know that Intel now
no longer requires an ISA bus on a PC? Their plan in the next
couple years is to obsolete the ISA bus and drop support for it.
Apparently, PCI will still be around, so any add-in cards will need
to be PCI.
The motherboards we're buying now have disk controllers and
a video controller built in, along with the usual serial and
parallel ports, plus USB. Basically everything that used to be
on its own add-in card is now standard on the motherboard. We
can bring up a whole computer with 0 cards installed. (I think
we still need to add a card for sound. That won't last long,
though, I'll bet.)
All of the solutions being used by ham radio programs for
controlling switch boxes, sending CW, etc. have been a
semi-kludge, manually setting data and control signals high
and low to achieve the desired effect. (Not to say I haven't
done that myself in my software.) What would be really neat
for the future is a standard USB ham radio accessory box.
This box would connect via USB and have connections for
paddles in and out, probably a connection to talk to the
radio(s) and either connections for top-ten type devices
or the device functionality built-in. We could build this today,
but I'm not sure what the interest level would be. And, the
ham radio software would have to support it. This would
get further into the Windows API stuff than most of the
current software goes.
For a while, we'll still be able to run the way we are. Maybe
for years there will be parallel and serial ports on our
computers. But, there will be a day when a significant number
do not.
Besides, things like sending CW are really a great application
for a small embedded processor. The logging program could
send a command to the external box to send a letter. The
box would take care of it and the logging program wouldn't
have to get bogged down in the details. No more timing loops,
etc. to try to send CW at the same time everything else is
going on.
73
Jeff N9HZQ
ISA, RIP 198? - 2000 (we'll see)
----------
From: jfeustle
Sent: Wednesday, July 15, 1998 8:33 AM
To: Jeff Tucker; trlog@contesting.com
Subject: [TRLog] USB and cards
The only thing I've run across that could be connected to the USB of my now
aging Compaq was the new Microsoft keyboard that I bought for it. USB has
been described in terms much like SCSI connections only you are not limited
to seven or eight that you can daisy chain together. Unless I'm wrong or
missed something in NinfoWorld, USB will probably be of little help for
adding serial ports. It's gotten lukewarm real support--as opposed to
enthusiastic "promised" support--from many vendors. I got my multi-port
card from Radio Shack and it has worked flawlessly ever since I configured
and installed it. I also had to make some changes in the BIOS setup for my
computer as it set COMM 1 and 2 to odd addresses. Now, to get old "fat
fingers" to perform flawlessly.
73,
Joe, N8JF
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Date: Wed, 15 Jul 1998 08:33:33 -0400
From: jfeustle <jfeustle@uoft02.utoledo.edu>
Subject: [TRLog] USB and cards
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