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Connectors That Changed the World

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Re: Connectors That Changed the World

#31

Post by rleigh »

myself248 wrote: post #15
exmadscientist wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And neither are they RS-232, unless you've got a transceiver (MAX232 etc) in there :) Man... USB CDC is painful. It's so much "fun" that a serious solution on one product was two back-to-back FTDI transceivers. I think they finally designed that out, but I'm scared to look at what might be in its place now....

https://www.tindie.com/products/8086net/usb-usb-null-modem-c... presented without comment

Also https://www.ftdichip.com/Support/Documents/DataSheets/Cables...

They are genuinely useful.

Re: Connectors That Changed the World

#32

Post by nielsbot »

buildbot wrote: post #25
m463 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it two lines with ^S/^Q/BREAK, or hardware flow control, with or without ring, db25->db9 converters (never of the right gender), etc... I was pretty happy to throw it out the window in favor of USB. Of course, firewire was better than usb and the whole cycle started again.

I've recently started working with firewire, and man what an interesting bus. You've got isochronous and asynchronous support simultaneously, awesome! But then you get this: "Voltage is specified as unregulated and should nominally be about 25 volts (range 24 to 30)" Looking at the nearest firewire device on my table, it will certainly blow up if I get near it with 25 volts. It's like USB-C without any negotiation!

I worked on the FireWire driver stack for OS X... and we encountered many incidents of managing to plug in the 6-pin connector upside down. Devices will actually catch fire. (FireWire carries up to 45W (!) at 30v)

Also, isochronous mode is great in theory, but in practice, at least in a desktop computer, the rest of the machine internals are not isochronous so you can still run into real-time delivery failures.

Re: Connectors That Changed the World

#33

Post by c3534l »

jvanderbot wrote: post #26

So, am I crazy or does every header file define an API since the dawn of header files? Is API really meant to specify just the remote procedure interfaces like Rest, RPC, etc?

You're correct, but a lot of otherwise knowledgeable and professional people seem to understand the word different because of how they see the word used in context in IRL.

Re: Connectors That Changed the World

#34

Post by hedberg10 »

Animats wrote: post #29
hedberg10 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is an ad. It worked. Don't expect a car advertisement to teach you how an engine actually works.

Don't expect a car advertisement to teach you how an engine actually works. Why not? [1] [1] https://youtu.be/7Z_TaWWG_NI

I knew this was coming, but those ads are not the feeling based, narcissism invoking ads of today.

Re: Connectors That Changed the World

#35

Post by EdwardDiego »

wolfgang42 wrote: post #21

Correction on #3: It was generally the brakemen , not the engineers, who were doing the coupling. (Engineers mostly stayed in the engine.) It’s horrifying how cavalierly this problem was treated; there’s an old joke about how, at conventions for brakemen, everyone had to pair up to applaud. Brakemen also had the unenviable job of running along the tops of the cars while the train was in motion, jumping the gaps to ge…

> It’s horrifying how cavalierly this problem was treated; there’s an old joke about how, at conventions for brakemen, everyone had to pair up to applaud.

I'll admit it took a bit for me to realise the horror of that joke, but boy howdy.

I'm rather glad we've moved beyond an era of business and government where traumatic amputations were considered an inevitable fact of life.

Re: Connectors That Changed the World

#36

Post by throw0101a »

wolfgang42 wrote: post #23
hug wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are interested in being a pedant, which you may or may not be: What you call DB-9 is actually D E -9. (A DB-9 would be the size of a DB-25 but with only 9 pins, which would be weird.) What you call RJ11 is a 6p2c. (Six position, two connectors.) What you call an RJ45 is an 8p8c. (You can guess this one.)

To expand on the pedanticness: The letter in the D-subminiature line (aside: they really didn’t anticipate how small connectors were going to become) refers to the shell size (A through E, though not in size order). “DB” is frequently used colloquially as a prefix for any size in the line. There’s also some interesting variants like the DB13W3, which is a B-size shell containing 10 ordinary pins plus 3 coax connector…

Article:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D-subminiature

Re: Connectors That Changed the World

#38

Post by dan_hawkins »

ktpsns wrote: post #2

USB had a quite successful precursor: RS-232. The serial standard is now 60 years old (!) and still much more widespread then USB in many industry machines.

Actually the more appropriate predecessor of USB is 8-bit Atari SIO:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_SIO

Re: Connectors That Changed the World

#39

Post by emteycz »

nielsbot wrote: post #32
buildbot wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've recently started working with firewire, and man what an interesting bus. You've got isochronous and asynchronous support simultaneously, awesome! But then you get this: "Voltage is specified as unregulated and should nominally be about 25 volts (range 24 to 30)" Looking at the nearest firewire device on my table, it will certainly blow up if I get near it with 25 volts. It's like USB-C without any negotiation!

I worked on the FireWire driver stack for OS X... and we encountered many incidents of managing to plug in the 6-pin connector upside down. Devices will actually catch fire. (FireWire carries up to 45W (!) at 30v) Also, isochronous mode is great in theory, but in practice, at least in a desktop computer, the rest of the machine internals are not isochronous so you can still run into real-time delivery failures.

> Devices will actually catch fire.

A rare case of successful naming, then.

Re: Connectors That Changed the World

#40

Post by davidgould »

EdwardDiego wrote: post #35
wolfgang42 wrote: post #21

Correction on #3: It was generally the brakemen , not the engineers, who were doing the coupling. (Engineers mostly stayed in the engine.) It’s horrifying how cavalierly this problem was treated; there’s an old joke about how, at conventions for brakemen, everyone had to pair up to applaud. Brakemen also had the unenviable job of running along the tops of the cars while the train was in motion, jumping the gaps to ge…

> It’s horrifying how cavalierly this problem was treated; there’s an old joke about how, at conventions for brakemen, everyone had to pair up to applaud. I'll admit it took a bit for me to realise the horror of that joke, but boy howdy. I'm rather glad we've moved beyond an era of business and government where traumatic amputations were considered an inevitable fact of life.

I'd be glad of that too, but we are not there yet.
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