Just seeing the title of this video sent me into a mid-life crisis due to the overwhelming realisation that I now live in a world where life prior to USB is 'retro' and needs a video reminding people of what the stone age was like. Thanks for that. Thanks.
Except this is the kind of retro where trying to get equipment that use these old connectors to work is akin to pulling teeth. Totally understand your point. Anyone who didn't live with them will never understand how lucky they are to have easy, plug and play connectivity.
I remember doing computer training in the late 80's/early 90's at school and carried on when I left school and thought 'What the hell is this lunacy!?' I was always wondering why there was a perpetual faff about trying to get something to work and I quickly learned to fucking hate and despise that side of things with too many legacy type connections and other pointless tech filth. The arrival of USB was like harps and angels and if kids today want to know how easy they have it, hand them an AT/XT standard PC and throw them 4-8 cards to fuck about with and deliver the most efficient set up possible with the limitations offered. Soft cock millennial types will be crying in a corner within 30 seconds, the braver of the bunch will probably give up a few hours later after getting one thing to work and only the hardcore will succeed.... THE NEXT DAY!
Yeah, pretty much. My first reaction to the title was that it hurts a little inside to know that there's an actual generational difference between pre and post USB. Never did have a problem using a joystick on the game port on my sound card!
Dude, I totally get you. I spent many hours, days, months of my youth trying to sort out how to transfer data fast enough, since serial connections sucked big time. Fortunately when I learned to use direct ethernet connections, it all went much better.
@@ianrwood21 People that JAMMED the VGA plugs in when a pin was slightly off, mashed the pins and wonder why they have weird colors on the screen. Then the screwdowns are so tight that you have to wonder if Hercules owned that pc.
I was going to complain as to why this video was made as I remember using these ports like it was yesterday. But I guess yesterday was 20 something years ago Jesus I have officially felt that first old man feeling.
When Ajay Bhatt passes away, I think he's going to get trolled. The pallbearers will start to lower his casket onto the lowering mechanism, lift it up, turn 180° and then lower it again.
28 March 2019 I just installed a PCI-E WiFi card, and removed the dedicated graphics card, turning my worthless years-old gaming PC into an office PC. Few months later, I got a promotion for providing the best office PC my company has ever seen.
My introduction to USB was back in the 80's when I bought an Atari 800 computer that used SIO connectors that were the precursor of USB, invented at Atari by one of the two gentlemen credited with the invention of USB (I forget which of the two it was though) Us Atari retro-enthusiasts have our SIO ports transfering at rates of 127K today, and we use SIO2USB adapters to communicate with a PC via USB to transfer or load files from "virtual" disk drives on the PC!
There's a few reasons for that. First of all, USB uses its two data pins for data going both ways. Old serial ports, on the other hand, couldn't do that. There had to be separate pins for each direction. Additionally, both the computers and the devices you were plugging into them were a lot dumber, and couldn't do nearly as much stuff automatically. Most of the additional pins are there for the computer or device to state that they are ready to send or receive information. Sending that over the data pins would have been possible (it's only about a byte of information), but parsing that information requires a lot more engineering compared to just checking whether the voltage on a particular pin is positive or negative as you need it.
25 pin serial, and 9 pin serial actually only used 2 pins for data, the rest were signal ground, flow control and out of band signals (like ring indicator)
Twenty-five pins, but sometimes only four were connected and only three wires used. There were a multitude of configurations with devices needing different connections.
You screwed it in and could lift the entire machine with it. Same for the VGA (D-sub) and DVI ports. Once they're in, they stay in, unlike HDMI which comes lose just from turning the monitor.
@@HappyBeezerStudios ... I am terrified every time I have to unplug a HDMI plug because I never know if it will go in and work again. Hate them! I have even gone as far as buying an extra media box so I can have one for my projector and another for the TV so I don't have to swap the cables all the time.
IBM AT ... It was an acronym for "Advanced Technology" - That is why everyone (including IBM themselves) pronounced it "I B M A T" as in each separate letter, not the word "at."
Actually, that isn't an acronym. Acronyms actually spell out words, or sounds that can be spoken as if words, like RADAR, NIC (Network Interface Controller), or BASIC (Beginner's All Purpose Symbolic Instruction Code) for example. AT, and XT are just initials for Advanced Technology, and eXtended Technology (though it should have been the PC ET in that regard), or Windows NT (for Nice Try or Not Today).
Funny how Apple is never part of these standardisation groups. They've always done it "their way", leading to tons of obsolete hardware. In the end they follow the standards, albeit a few years later :)
Apple was one of the first manufacturers to use USB, the first to ship all notebooks with 802.11 networking as the base config, they helped intel develop thunderbolt, was part of the development of ieee 1394 and so on. Yeah all those were years ago but still valid things
To their credit, the original iMac bet heavily on USB pretty early on, and that was one of the things that really popularized it. Before that, their keyboard and mouse connections were generally done through ADB (Apple Desktop Bus), a system that allowed daisy-chaining and used a round 4-pin mini-DIN connector. The biggest problem with it besides being proprietary was that it wasn't safe to plug or unplug devices with the machine turned on (though people did it anyway).
@@FateStorm The ports are different. Although I'll admit the technologies used are EXTREMELY similar, they have many differences, and Thunderbolt USB-C have the most differences. For exemple, there's no longer a master/slave structure.
You all are bunch of uneducated people. First if all, there is USB-A, USB-B and USB-C. USB-A and USB-B have Micro and Mini prefixes, and then just no prefix. then there are versions of them. USB 1.0, 2.0, 3.0, 3.1, 3.2.
@@MoonLiteNite they get better everyday from it's learning algorithms. Providing captions make it so the auto generated captions can be more accurate as they learn what it "sounds like"
Indoor plumbing. Safe food in the grocery store. Vacuum tubes. Silicon. Medical care. Mass-production. Space travel. USB, Unicode, HTTP would not have been possible without the above things that, again, we take for granted.
I remember these days well - having to load serial port drivers high to conserve as much base memory as possible, eliminating IRQ and DMA conflicts with sound cards and serial ports and transferring files between computers with parallel cables. Meanwhile, video (display) ports have gone the opposite direction rather than the simplification and standardisation across devices of USB.
@@IANSYT DVI-A isn't much better than VGA; it's the exact same signaling in a subtly different connector. Connectors like DB13W3 used coaxial connections to really preserve analog signal integrity. Incidentally, USB type C has generated a new generation of confusion with different cables and devices doing different things on the same connector; very recently HDMI over type C thankfully died (as has HDMI type B), so type C now has only about 6 different protocols left just for video signals. It's not really helping that every minor revision of USB seems to rename the existing protocols, having started in the perfectly insane order low-full-high-super...
Thanks for this nostalgia splash! I have some comments, though. At 1:53 - this is actually a 16-bit ISA card, in a slot that accepts 8-bit and 16-bit ISA and 32-bit VLB cards (at 2:13 one can see the shorter, 8-bit-only ISA slots). Also, the card at 3:46 is an I/O card, which in addition to serial and parallel ports has pin connectors for hard disk, floppy disk, joystick (I assume the "game" port refers to that), and another COM port (the third pin header being for jumpers to configure the board).
In the days before home Wi-Fi, I remember soldering together a very long (trying to think if it was 7 metres or 10 metres) RS232 cable so that my flatmate and I could connect our PCs of the time and play Doom against each other ... it was so much fun playing against each other in different rooms ... I swore at him so much lol
@@tomf3150 but with a null modem, you don't tie up your phone line. Also OP says flatmate, meaning they were in the same apartment and likely had one phone line, wouldn't really be as efficient/easy as just a null modem cable and IPX packet driver. :3
My friends dad worked as the IT guy at a large company so he always brought home the latest and greatest networking gear for us to play with. I remember looking at a rack mounted 100mb switch and drooling. ...I miss LAN parties.
for this very reason, it bugged the crap out of me early on every time i heard someone say "SAY-tah" for sata. Chances are, the person pronouncing it that way was not into computers when it was just ATA.
Who remembers connecting 2 PC's together with a serial cable and using "LapLink" software in dos to transfer files between machines at a whopping 115k.
I did that, but not for LapLink. I used it for DooM, the first Command & Conquer and Red Alert games with a friend, and briefly for Jedi Knight until we upgraded our modems to 56k and moved on to IP games, and later the Zone. Good times. I do miss the old days, but I do still use a lot of oldschool console copiers, so at least I still get to fiddle with floppies and parallel.
Back then "cable management" wasn't a thing. I believe I heard "rats nest" well over a thousand times during my youth. Once you got a piece of gear actually working, you never touched ANYTHING for fear of it crashing.
@@badspy100 Its simple. See the square holes on the metal plug then if the holes appear solid black then its the right way. if the square holes are white/dark gray/blue then turn your x postition 180[degreess] right/flip over.
i know about SCSI only because my SATA to USB adapter shows up as UAS (USB attached SCSI). But that makes it: Universal Serial Bus Attached Small Computer System Interface for Serial Advanced Technology Attachment USBASCSIFSATA. Find me a longer acronym, I dare ya.
@@bwgti SCSI provides no extra security. But from the 1980s until the 2010s, hard disk factories have consistently refused to sell their fastest drives (10000 rpm and 15000 rpm) with the IDE/ATA/SATA/USB interface, forcing high speed computers to install SCSI/SAS adapters. Similarly very few companies were selling adapters for plugging in more than 8 disks without SCSI.
Nobody misses configuring IRQs and DMA addresses to try to fix hardware incompatibilities!! Oh what's that, you bought a new printer? Now your sound card doesn't work! Oh you bought a new graphics card? Now your modem is crashing! I'm getting a cold sweat just thinking about it.
Ahhh i remember the days when we used to call usb useless serial bus. I swear i saw once a really early 90's compaq with an usb and a ps2 port guess it was a 486
Annoying part of bundled joystick port into the sound card is you can only have 1 joystick port and most clone cards did't have more than 1 port, not that i knew of. The problem got complicated as you can't install another card due to resources compatibility issues. I still remember before that older program can access 2 joystick ports for same/split-screen 2-players game. For example: Microsoft GW-Basic supports 2 joysticks, using its STICK & STRIG functions.
Game port were IRQ driven and that was cool cuz no input lag. On the other hand allocating irq was a nightmare, and usually several devices/components/peripheral had to share the same irq.
Serial ports are still alive and well. They may be less common on your average home PC, but there are still a lot of devices that have them for control and monitoring. Things like industrial controllers, and POS equipment still use it. As do things like commercial satellite receives and dish movers like your local cable company uses to receiver the TV channels they rebroadcast to you. It"s also a common interface for device programmers and things like JTAG adapters. The reason why, is because it's easy to interface to, from a hardware point of view, but even more so from a software point of view. In modern day protected mode operating systems you can easily write software that talks directly to a COM port. YOU SIMPLY CANNOT DO THAT WITH USB. To do the same with USB, you'd have to write a device driver and you'd have to write one for every device you connect. Then you'd have to make your software talk to the driver. And you'd have to get the driver signed by microsoft or else Windows will complain about it. It's a lot more complicated than using the serial port. And on top of that, for low speed devices that don't require massive bandwidth, it's actually less efficient and performs far worse, because USB is a polled bus and not interrupt driven like the COM ports are. If you have a low bandwidth device connected to a COM port that only occasionally sends and receives simple commands, the PC can pay it no attention and do other tasks when there is no activity. When activity occurs it will get an interrupt and can respond then. With a polled bus like USB, the system has to constantly check for activity. This is a huge waste, especially for a device that only needs to send a few bytes back and forth every once in a while.
True, many embedded systems use them. I think DOS made these old ports more difficult to use, partly because of DOS itself but also the plethora of flexibility.
I have to set up printers for use in Point of sale that use serial ports to communicate, also Grocery store receiving uses EDI technology called DEX to communicate with vendors making delivery with handheld devices..
Took me back to the days of using a null modem cable and ZIP drive :D What I found fascinating was that initially serial communication was inferior, and all the fast technologies used parallel data transfer. And then things changed, and everything went serial (SATA, USB) and outdid parallel technologies.
PhilsComputerLab Makes me wonder, if parrallel was still being developed today, no matter how unrealistic that is, what form would it take? How fast would it be? Would people find a use for it?
The problem with parallel is that because you have so many wires transmitting data in close proximity to one another, interference becomes a huge problem as you increase cable length or speed. Serial allows for better shielding. Perhaps parallel could be faster with the proper shielding, but it would be about as thick as eight USB cables bundled together, which isn't practical. If you do that, you might as well use eight USB cables and drive eight times as many devices.
Phil I still used dial-up up until 2001-2002. During the turn of the century everyone was using PCI based WinModems that totally sucked up CPU resources and were generally slow. I did everything I could to round up a serial based hardware modem and it was simply better than those WinModems. It had to be powered but that was a small nuisance.
2:26 Pronunciation note: nobody ever said "at" to refer to the AT, they always said each letter individually, "aay tee" as contrasted with the older technology, which was XT
And then the nut would fall out and possibly short out your card. Those thumb screws were a nightmare also because they'd catch on every cable, making it impossible to pull the cable out from under your desk.
My favourite was always the clueless customers that tugged and tugged on their monitor cables until the port was physically ripped from the board; and then they'd get all shitty when you pointed it out to them.
@Barthy Col USB. 50/50 chance of getting it right and you get it wrong 100% of the time.... even after intensely staring at both ends of the connection. lol
PS/2 wasn't meant to be plugged and unplugged frequently. Which is kind of a problem for laptop users wanting to unplug the mouse so the connector doesn't brake off when they carry the laptop around
I should also point out that the first generation of printers and scanners which used USB 1/1.1 were horribly unreliable and gave USB a bad name which took a while for it to overcome. Useless Serial Bus is how many called it.
Great video. No one in the USA called the IBB advanced technology the "at" machine. It was always referred to as the letters "A-T". I bought one around 1986. It was killer expensive and upgrading memory took a card and the chips were... er... killer expensive.
So many companies involved in making the USB and still no one considered making it visually asymmetrical. And it's never the first try and amazingly never the second try either, even though the thing only has two possibilities. Good thing it keeps evolving though, now there are asymmetrical versions.
I still think jacks would be better as even though the new USB is reversible that just means it can be plugged in two ways instead of 1, a jack has no orientation. If modern jacks can carry 4 or 5 rings and USB only has 4 connections then they missed an opportunity to create a bus that is as foolproof as a headphone jack and even a toddler could plug in easily.
USB-A was always supposed to be the end that stays plugged into your machine, while USB-B, the one with slanted bottoms, was the one that was supposed to get plugged and unplugged all the time. The common mini and micro USB are technically considered USB-B, and you may find the old big USB-B even on modern printers.
do a video about how bad "plug and play" and usb in general was when it first came out. in hindsight i am amazed at how well named usb actually turned out to be.
Your comment just make me remember about Bill Gates and his engineer introducing Windows 98 Plug and Play capacities with a scanner that produced a blue screen. This one a Kodak moment an token in video: ruclips.net/video/LfNQOOr9aR8/видео.html At the end it was the scanner fault, lol
Saw the title and said to myself. "What a dumb question, of course we had this mess of gameports, serial ports, DIN ports, PS/2 and all other things both standard and proprietary. Who doesn't remember that?" Then it occurred to me. When was the last time I had a computer without USB ports? It doesn't seem like that long ago that USB made computing so much easier, but it's really been a long time hasn't it?
Just got my very first PC -- as in desktop -- with no other ports onboard but USB, and Ethernet and an unused DP. Not even a PS/2 port anymore. It's a strange new world.
I'm still a holdout for dedicated PS/2 keyboard port. A PS/2 keyboard could still be used to operate the machine when USB just wasn't working. Maybe it's an old problem already solved long ago, but I still like having the fallback - even if it's only ever used to access BIOS and toggle the "Legacy USB" option - because not having PS/2 when you _need_ it can be crippling.
P yeah it's solved long ago. To do what you suggested anyway. Haven't had a BIOS/UEFI that didn't respond to USB Keyboards ever. The problem was more with operating systems. Like Windows XP/7 not having drivers for your USB controller and thus not recognizing your keyboard. If that's fixable by "Legacy USB" (usually isn't) you could still do that with only a USB keyboard. Still use PS/2 as well tho. In theory it's still better. True N-Key rollover and in theory lower input lag, as PS/2 can directly interrupt your CPU, USB can't. But I just use it, because the cheap OEM keyboard I'm using is PS2 and I can't be bothered to switch to something "better".
Max Mustermann Agreed. And even NKRO is a non-issue these days ... except on the very cheapest and junkiest of keyboards. 26KRO (or better) is available on many USB keyboards ... and I don't have 26 fingers to type with anyways, lol.
The first mainstream computer to use USB was the original Apple Bondi Blue iMac from 1997 and that was a little over 20 years ago now. That means that their may likely be a not insignificant portion of the audience for this video that was born on or after the 1st mainstream USB equipped computers or who was to young in the early early to mid 90’s to remember what sort of ports the family computer used back then.
I remember when USB first came around. The guy at my local computer shop told me about it - and I couldn't quite believe it. It sounded amazing and so cool. First time I used one it was so amazing not having to mess with DMA and IRQ settings. Honestly would have never believed that they would have been as prevalent as they continue to be today at the time.
.....mean while Mac OS users have NEVER had to deal with IRQs.... So it’s ironic when people think of Mac OS as the inferior OS. Sure, it’s not as designed for games as windows is, but Mac OS can do things windows isn’t as good at as well.
Aaron Powell Macs aren't inherently bad they just don't cater to the people that want customization and tinkering that you can get with PC. If you like your system out of the box, Macs are good I guess... If not overpriced.
Actually back in those days you could customize Macintoshes really easily. My Powermacintosh G3 had all kinds of expansion options. It had PCI slots, an AGP Slot, and some other slots I don't quite know what they were. but non customizable macs are something from the recent past.
This was nostalgic for me. I taught Data Communications at local colleges in the nineties. I got into it from teaching official Novell networking classes but when I moved to Microsoft certified courses I also began teaching general data communications. Most of my course was a detailed examination of communication protocols which got me into teaching pin outs which in turn got me into identifying connectors. Most of the students were trying to prepare for being some kind of on-site microcomputer hardware guy at some of the many new companies then starting up. I was then a manager of such people in my day job and I knew that to be accepted as a PC guru you had to recognize the various cables and connectors. The guru must never say "What the hell is that?" when confronted by a strange cable. And in those days there was a lot of diversity. So I began collecting weird and obscure wires and plugs. I then started to bring them to class and have quizzes to see who could identify them. This was always fun. It was certainly more interesting than my lectures on data packet formats.
@Ninja Master... British say everything wrong? He says it wrong yes, but it's not the British that are prone to pronounce words wrong... have you ever heard an American pronounce Jaguar? Or aluminium? Just a couple of examples...
there is something i am missing in this video, and pretty relevant. The fact that before plug and play, every connection has to been set manually in facts of DMA and IRQ, sometimes forced using jumpers or dip switches next to the cables
oh the days when something went wrong and spending hours troubleshooting jumpers and irq settings and everything else with no internet and only manuals and you own experience
It may have been worth mentioning the USB->PS/2 adapters many keyboards and mice were shipped with in the early 2000's to help support old PC's. I have a small container full of those things!
Those old serial ports are one of the ways to transfer files downloaded from the Internet onto systems that normally would not be able to access the 'net. A null modem cable and a terminal program on the PC and the receiving computer lets your PC sorta work like a BBS or otherwise ftp server.
Then they are not USB ports. The alignment of the ports is in the spec, that's why "logo side up" always works. Keep in mind that "up" isn't *your* "up", it's the device's "up".
Yes, but there's not a consistent "up" between all devices of the same form factor. I have tablets and phones where the USB ports are aligned towards the screen, and ones where they are aligned away from the screen, since it all comes down to which way up the board goes, which can often depend on which way most economically uses the space within the case.
"Splendid" is not exactly the word I'd use for the connector chaos that reigned before USB! 😃 But it was indeed kind of fun to figure this crap out back then. I remember being super proud when I managed to connect two computers via their parallel ports and set up Windows 98 correctly to allow transferring files.
Ha! I remember when we had to install add-on cards to add some of those ports to computers, and was relieved when they started putting those headers on the motherboard. Heck, I remember being impressed with PS/2 ports when they were introduced ("Gosh" I thought. "Those PS/2 ports are so small!")
Ahh, yeah! Legacy connectors... Those glorious days of bulky and indestructible (dodgy micro USB, anyone? :P) connectors... :D THose evenings where you'd jury-rig a crossover CAT5 UTP for a multiplayer session, or bend that ground pin on your VGA connector to have it fit... Yeah, those days a baller PC had all its slots full of all sorts of exotic expansion cards, the more obscure, the better :P
they were not that bad the plugs were round and usually had a flat side which went to the top but you did have to power off the computer before changing a keyboard or mouse for them to be detected as they were how hot swappable
On the one hand, there weren't really any computer ports before USB-C (and Lightning) that worked either-side up. On the other hand, the fix companies came up with to make symmetrical USB-A plugs was so simple you wonder why the designers never thought of it to begin with.
@@sidewinder3411 Jokes can't be stolen, they can only be shared, because someone says a joke and someone else thought it was very funny and decides to share it doesn't mean it's stolen. By the way, does "stealing" a joke hurt people monetarily like how real stealing does, I'll let you answer that.
You only gave SCSI a passing mention, when I worked on making computers for video editing in the late 90's, SCSI and SCSI hard drives were King, everything had to have them.
Well, I was 6 at the time so god knows what type of SCSI port I had. I was good enough with PCs to run down most of the specs, but not good enough to open the thing up and know exactly what port was what.
Yeah, and technically you could connect everything using SCSI, not just storage devices or scanner. And SCSI was capable for features 20 years ago they now sata praise for...
SCSI was popular because it was great, but it was basically a flash in the pan in the history of technology. So I can see why it only got a passing mention on a video of the tech that basically made it so obsolete so quickly. I remember when everybody thought SCSI was going to replace everything. Turns out USB did that.
USB C and we've finally made it, you can power, transfer data, plug in peripherals, and transmit video in high def on USB. It only took 1/3 of a century! lol
That battery is near to 35years old... Varta once made very good batteries, but this changed to crap in 2002, when the Varta battery brands where sold to "Johnson Controls" and "Spectrum Brands".
I was too young to live in a time of multiple expansion cards but i still like the visual of a bunch of slots being used by expansion cards. so much so that i when i started building an injest machine for converting all the physical storage (cd,dvd,vhs) to a server i went all out and have almost ever slot used up. it looks great.
If I remember correctly USB was not so resource-saving in the beginning, compared to serial connections. Old serial mice and keyboards were more popular with gamers for a while (because of the polling rate of USB Mouse)
Hello, Yes, of course, I meant something else. Earlier in Pentium and K6 times this was really relevant with increasing CPU performance and better implementation in chipsets this became irrelevant over time. The gaming part that has lost importance over the years also today allows any keyboard/mouse to change the polling rate etc. But for a while, it was really a big thing
My motherboard in early 1997 had USB headers, but they weren't hooked up by default. One thing I wish USB could do is have a USB 3 link to a hub and then multiple USB 2 streams off of that hub have the full USB 3 bandwidth to the computer.. instead the link runs at single USB 2 stream speed for USB 2 devices
"...The rest of us probably dont care..." I care sir, I care. The year is 1999, the day is December 25th, and we had just gotten to my grandparents house for my 16th Christmas on earth. My Grandfather has excitement in his eye, I know that means he got someone something good. He could barely contain himself as he hands me my gift. I slowly open it while my mind races with the possible options inside inside this pandoras box. Pulling back the wrapping paper I see "lex...DPI..." I remove the paper and realize its a brand new Lexmark flat bed scanner with the highest resolution and all the DPIs the 90s had to offer.My grandfather wasn't exactly tech savvy (being born in 1919 and all) but with the coaching from family and the Circuit City employee - he knew he had something special. At the time professional level digital photo scanning for the average consumer was still expensive and still quite new. I had just gotten into photo manipulation and Photoshop so this gift was super awesome. Imagine my dismay when I realize it comes with the newest/fastest industry standard - USB. My PC at the time DID NOT have this fancy new connection ( I didnt tell my grandfather since it probably would have broken his heart). My smile was real when I said "THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU I CANT WAIT TO USE IT". I eventually convinced my parents (about a year later) to buy a new PC with USB.. It took me a year but god damnit I used that scanner and I loved it.
Great story!! I remember talking my parents into buying a Star NX-2420 Rainbow printer for our Commodore-64 with a non-Commodore configuration (parallel port?) and a Commodore interface, for about 50 bucks more, in anticipation of having a PC in the future...once I got my PC in 1995, I used that printer for years until I got an inkjet, lol..also, cut my teeth on Aldus Photostyler, shortly before Adobe bought them out...put my butt in the museum with the other relics!!
I need no extra drivers on Linux, although partly _because_ I choose most of my devices for plug-and-play Linux compatibility. ...Actually, on second thought, the dreaded printers need drivers. Are you talking about printers? Those are the worst. Everything else works fine though: keyboards, mice, webcams, storage media, some wireless adapters, card readers...
it's used because a lot of companies are too cheap to lose the money from down time and the cost to upgrade to use modern technology. Eventually they all have to upgrade because once your shit from the 80s or 90s breaks then you're dead in the water. I'm a controls engineer/system integrator (:
@@travcollier often those converters don't work reliably with old school serial products. i used to run automated camera controllers that used an old 9 pin and we had migrated to a new server that had no native 9 pin ports. i went through several different vendors for converters and each one of them would cause some weird error that resulted in non-function about 1% of the time. 1% was unacceptable for this application so instead just went for a pci 9 pin serial card and that solved the problem.
@@oldtwinsna8347 I never had any issues with FTDI serialUSB, but I was working with relatively modern microcontrollers mostly. The off-brand and counterfeit converter chips suck though.
It absolutely isn't. Don't know why but he mispronounces things an awful lot. Listen to be pronounces 'BBC micro' 'bibbycee' or even 'the' as 'vuh'. Drives me crazy
AT is 'Advanced Technology'. He's unusual in mispronouncing it. It's a fair bet that he doesn't say 'At-ex' for ATX. But if he's not old enough to have used AT boxes, and has only read about them, rather than being told about them, then his error is understandable. On the other hand, he also gets DEC wrong way around. Luck of the draw perhaps? His pronunciation of BBC is acceptable, since he has a particular regional accent. I'll not be subscribing, because he makes a number of incorrect assertions in his videos, whilst glossing over important points, probably because of insufficient research of reliable sources. Wikipedia, for instance, needs treating with great care, because anybody can edit and post wrong information on there.
Firewire wasn't an Apple-only thing. I have a Dell laptop with a mini Firewire socket, although in the PC world it is commonly known as IEEE 1394 or i.Link. Many Sony laptops also carried it.
IEEE 1394 is a serial bus standard that was collaboratively developed by Apple, Intel, Texas Instruments, Microsoft, Sun Microsystems, Compaq, and National Semiconductor it was a real bus, it was low latency, it was DMA capable and it was HIGH Speed compared to USB. But it was also expensive and only was used in professional equipment (the Apache attack helicopter) like audio and video equipment, and early external hard drives including the first 3 gens of apples iPod. Nvidia Chipsets offered fire wire as a default. And many other PCs hat it too. And it was often the only way to get digital video of a miniDV camcorder.
@osp80 AFAIK the only thing it was used for was local multiplayer. Though I guess Sony was already buying the controller chips at sufficient volume for it to be fairly inexpensive. Possible even cheaper than adding ethernet.
I still have an early 2000s Sony digital camcorder, and it has a Firewire/1394 port. I never had a PC that I could plug it into... Always had to use the RCA connectors.
@@keybizzoneg5209 : 95's second service Pack was referred to as "OSR2" or Original Equipment Manufacturer Service Release 2. IIRC, MS didn't refer to it's Service Packs on its consumer OS's as 'Service Packs' until Windows XP where they unified the consumer and enterprise workstation OS's into one lineage.
Thanks for the nostalgia trip! I sold computers and peripherals from the early 1990s to the early 2000s and witnessed most of this first hand. Now it's a USB-C world! I also had an Iomega ZIP drive and it had the dreaded "click of death"...
They sure do have it good. Think back on: Pre-on-demand-streaming. Pre-wireless networking. Pre-internet.Pre-DVDs. Pre-DVRs. Pre-mobile-phones. Pre-compact-discs. Pre-networking. Pre-cordless-phones. Pre-VCRs. Pre-television-remotes. Pre-microwave-ovens. Pre-color-television. Pre-television. Pre-radio. Pre-refrigerators. Pre-electricity. Pre-indoor-plumbing......
I remember using Laplink over serial, then later parallel which was amazing at the time. I always carried my laplink cables and software with me everywhere. I feel old.
i like to keep a system with fdd, serial and parallel ports for those rare times i have to use low level programming stuff like motherboard bios chip recovery or old hardware.
USB and SATA have made a huge impact in the world of hardware. I remember needing a SCSI for an external hard drive, mouse on the serial port on my first computer- an "IBM 286 AT with PC Front End / DOS"
Nice overview, though as an Atari fan, I would have expected mention of the Atari SIO port, which was kind of a precursor of USB, being serial and allowing chaining of devices. And of course, its designer Joe Decuir also participated in the design of USB.
Yeah, the big-deal ports on the Ataris were the 9-pin game-controller port, which actually became something of an industry standard for a while (Commodore and Sega both used versions of it), and the SIO, which didn't. They sold an "Interface Module" that you'd put into the SIO daisy chain to provide RS-232 and Centronics parallel ports, because I think even some of the modems and printers they sold used those.
Dang...Am I _that_ old that people are now starting to ask what was used before USB? I was born in 1999 and even I remember life before USB was everything...
I was born in 1993. I grew up with Parallel and Serial ports as well as floppy disks and the age of the Soundblaster card. Don't forget, there was also firewire. :)
I am born 62 and believe me, there was no need for this junk. And it took years to run flawlessly. USB was nothng than a cheap way for a bus system. And latest now everyone talks about IOT. We could have had this 20y earlier...
I started with a Timex Sinclair 1000, then a C=64, then a C=128, then a PC-XT, then a PC-AT (both running DOS 6.22), then a 286 (Win 3.1), then 386, then 486 (Windows 95),then 586, then Pentium 1 (Windows XP), etc...you can probably figure out where this is going. :-)
It was confusing times. SoundBlaster's approach basically became the de facto standard because it worked really well, it cost less, and it was the most common/popular (thus most widely supported and compatible) implementation. There were "official" specifications in the technical literature - which supported technically superior hardware usages and capabilities - but they were basically ignored by the PC world, people were building forward from what was proven to work best, not from what was formally designed to be more limited.
You can imagine how excited people were to see there serial ports on those old computers. I know how excited I am when I see my usb ports and audio ports and graphics card ports.
Feywer Folevado Haha, same here. I’m 29, started to fiddle with computers and electronics at very early age (mid 90s). I feel really old when I watch video like these, where they talk about expansion cards, IRQs, null-modem cables and similar stuff that was just my regular everyday challange back in the days, like some ‘retro, vintage’ stuff...
+Chris Debnam Which I just did (turned 40 last week)... Funny to think, there are people of adult age at present who never knew of a time before the Internet, when I only got on it when I started university.
I'm 27, got my first own PC in late 1996. A used 486 running Win95. But I later downgraded to DOS because Win95 sucked. Even as a kid, I rather typed some commands instead of dealing with constant random bluescreens. It does make me feel a bit old, but... it was the golden age. Since over 10 years now, everything basically stayed the same. Times were more interesting back then. I switched from a Pentium 1 130mhz to a AMD Duron 700mhz. Over 5 times as fast. Next leap 1400Mhz Athlon. Then 2400Mhz Athlon XP (the one with real 2400Mhz, not just 2000 and 2400 Pentium Rating). My first USB stick had 16mb and cost 15€, which was a brilliant deal back then....next one up was 128mb, 256mb, 512mb, 1GB, 2GB, 4GB... HDD sizes, went from 2GB to 8GB to 40GB to 120GB. You almost always doubled what you had.
I feel somewhat lucky to be an age where I got to see a lot of this change. My Dad had to work with older computers for a while, so it was fascinating to see all our keyboards, mice, etc go from these types of cables to USB when we got a brand new iMac in 2007. Mt dad still has a lot of those cables and parts, and it's fun to look back at those times with them
Wait... no mention of Atari's SIO port from 1978? The guy who made SIO literally states that it's the basis of USB, as he worked on both. It allowed nearly unlimited daisy chaining, uses the same cable for all expansion devices and even has the devices give intelligent ID's etc. Perhaps it deserves its own video as it's pretty amazing. Don't get me wrong, I love your videos, but thought this should be known, as it was incredible at the time and was for decades (he was an Amiga guy too)
I know it's probably nothing to write home about, but I really want to see a DOS machine load something off tape now. That just seems so alien and bizarre to me that i need to see it to believe it.
Be N S O N Theres lots of C64 and VIC-20 videos that show exactly that. Cant recall ever seeing a PC do tape though. Also alot of videos of PDPs running reels. Some IBM 360/370s too.
Faster response time for gaming, plus the major security benefit of not allowing the "Bad USB" attack where a fake memory stick pretends to be a keyboard and automatically types in the commands to hack your computer.
Useful video! Most people are NOT hardware literate and vids like this help them learn. Those connectors have many other uses to but the vast majority of RUclips viewers are not techies and don't need to know them.
USB was in limited public use before Windows 98 was released. I tried using USB 1 devices with drivers in Windows 95, and later in Windows 98 but it was far too flakey to be of much use. Windows 98 SE support was a little better. Things improved a lot in 2000 when ME became available. So long as you kept your RAM below 256 MBytes! Odd that he didn't mention Laplink. I still have a Laplink connector which enabled two Windows computers to 'talk' to each other via USB. Much slower and shorter range than 10 Mbps Ethernet, but it worked, if you had Laplink installed. I ran the free trial version for years, because for some reason it kept working after the trial period had expired.
RWBHere Yeah, I know what you mean; I recently tried to build a bit of a "modern retro" gaming PC running Win98SE out of a system that originally had Windows XP on it. I couldn't even get the USB 1 drivers working for it...
I specifically remember being generally annoyed about USB stuff... as YES, the Windows.95b version has support... but getting support in Windows 95 was a major pain in the ass, as doing version updates of OS back then was... like getting a root canal done up. "Oh yeah... there is a way to get USBs to run in Windows 95... and literally the hoops you jump through actually make it much easier to just simply not use USB" It wasn't until Windows 2K and Windows XP started having a decent market share that most computers were running that... that I did not feel like USB stuff was not a pain in the ass to run. (At which time, I was doing most of my stuff on Linux anyways... which has its own weird USB growing pains) The reason USB took so long to get support is because Windows 95 did not support it by default. The Windows 95b version did not support it by default either. No machine with a standard install of Windows 95b could use USB ports. You literally had to pull out the install discs/disks for Windows 95b, begin and Install/Update process with it, and tell it to add USB support. Which... the Install/Update process for OS these days is a simple process... in the 90s it required a lot of annoying stuff, and generally was just as likely to fail as it would succeed. I remember install Linux for the first time in the 90s, and being amazed at how user friendly and intuitive the OS install process was by comparison... and... uh... yeah... that is an install process that generally is not available on most modern day distros for the express reason of it being archaic, clunky, and hard to navigate.
Try plugging in USB ... oops, upside down. Flip over, try again ... wtf, upside down again, extra attempt confirms. Flip over, try again ... fits fine, weird.
I longed for zip drive.. proper hankered after one. but by the time i finally could afford it. they'd been superseded by CDRoms.. There is something to be said for ps/2 keyboards/mice over their USB rivals.. speedwise.. I was gutted when I bought my last PC in 2008 (yes I know it's massively out of date now, but it still is working away) but there was no parallel printer port and my £1000 colour laser printer (yes £1000!!! in 2003) was parallel or network only, no USB on that.. I ended buying a parallel port I/O card, which works perfectly :)
I had an LS-120 - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SuperDisk Big Fat Floppy goodness. I had an internal drive and an external drive but because my mates had neither I always had to bring my external to their houses to show them what was on the disks. Knowing 15 year old me it was probably filth in .mpg format.
I bought a SCSI Zip drive for my Amiga. I had two power supplies die on me. The first one died when I unplugged it to move things around. It was unplugged for literally about two minutes and when I plugged it back in, it was dead. I forget how the second died. My drive also developed the annoying click. It never damaged any disks, but it was rather annoying to hear it just randomly click while accessing a disk.
Yeah, I caught the tail end of the life cycle of these connectors when I was little, so I grew up watching as each one of those got gradually replaced by USB, and I remember what it was like to use them... While it's certainly convenient that pretty much everything nowadays uses USB, I'll still gladly use a PS/2 Keyboard and mouse on my PC! It's good too because it frees up 2 USB jacks that I could use to connect gamepads~ I think I still have a couple of game controllers with that 15 pin connector though...
Haha, loose connectors which easily wiggle free, fall out, and unplug themselves. A worn USB connector isn't any better ... it might actually be even worse ... except that 99% of the time it can be hotplugged right back in without much delay or much issue. Although those anchor screws (on both ends of) old school serial/parallel/video ports were always awesomely secure. I'd love to see a return to this approach on hardware (like monitors, etc) which rarely gets moved or reconfigured.
I remember running my BBS *WAY BEFORE* USB came into being. Setting up interrupts, being certain that there are no IRQ conflicts, assigning COM ports, blah blah blah. :-) How I long for the sound of a 300BPS, 1200BPS, or 2400BPS call coming through (and yes, I was one of those nerds who left the modem speaker on so I could hear my BBS's callers connecting -- and also yes, I could quite easily distinguish a 1200BPS caller from a 2400BPS caller). And one of my test instruments from 2001 required a 16-bit ISA slot on the motherboard *AND* a parallel port (DB-25) connector for its security dongle.
"...this was another plug in card when expansion space may have been at a premium." As opposed to today where the vast majority of devices used have NO expansion slots at all (laptops and tablets almost never do).
I would like to see this mysterious tablet that has an expansion card, as I have seen a _phone_ with expansion cards (Librem 5) but never a tablet (unless MicroSD counts?). Do you know of any?
Ah USB. The standard connection where you have a 50/50 shot of having it the right direction, but it still somehow always takes three tries.
Lol
Seriously. Why is that.
Richard Sleeve - Your comment is so true! I'm glad to hear someone else say it! Lol
No longer true for USB Type C. Horray!
Ashley Boon yeah with usb c it takes 10 tires to position the device so it doesn’t fall out
Just seeing the title of this video sent me into a mid-life crisis due to the overwhelming realisation that I now live in a world where life prior to USB is 'retro' and needs a video reminding people of what the stone age was like.
Thanks for that. Thanks.
Lee K the future is now, old man!
Except this is the kind of retro where trying to get equipment that use these old connectors to work is akin to pulling teeth. Totally understand your point. Anyone who didn't live with them will never understand how lucky they are to have easy, plug and play connectivity.
I remember doing computer training in the late 80's/early 90's at school and carried on when I left school and thought 'What the hell is this lunacy!?' I was always wondering why there was a perpetual faff about trying to get something to work and I quickly learned to fucking hate and despise that side of things with too many legacy type connections and other pointless tech filth.
The arrival of USB was like harps and angels and if kids today want to know how easy they have it, hand them an AT/XT standard PC and throw them 4-8 cards to fuck about with and deliver the most efficient set up possible with the limitations offered.
Soft cock millennial types will be crying in a corner within 30 seconds, the braver of the bunch will probably give up a few hours later after getting one thing to work and only the hardcore will succeed.... THE NEXT DAY!
Yeah, pretty much. My first reaction to the title was that it hurts a little inside to know that there's an actual generational difference between pre and post USB. Never did have a problem using a joystick on the game port on my sound card!
Dude, I totally get you. I spent many hours, days, months of my youth trying to sort out how to transfer data fast enough, since serial connections sucked big time.
Fortunately when I learned to use direct ethernet connections, it all went much better.
But everyone over 35 has a box of those old cables "just in case."
Even I do, and I was born this century!
A big box under the bed and a drawer as well. I should probably dump the contents of the drawer into the box and use it for my various USB cables.
Thank God - I am not alone :) I still can - through adapters - to connect USB mouse -> ps2 -> com9 -> RS232.... You know - just in case ;)
My box of old cables takes more space then my PC. :p
i am 17 and i have multiple cable drawers with around 7kg of random cables
"What did we use before USB?"
A dark time of pain and suffering...
Especially if some of the pins bent or snapped off.
Exactly. People have it so easy now. They don't know the pain. 🤣
The dark age
@@johnfoltz8183 There you sat with a knife trying to straighten the pin - nightmare......
@@ianrwood21 People that JAMMED the VGA plugs in when a pin was slightly off, mashed the pins and wonder why they have weird colors on the screen. Then the screwdowns are so tight that you have to wonder if Hercules owned that pc.
I was going to complain as to why this video was made as I remember using these ports like it was yesterday. But I guess yesterday was 20 something years ago Jesus I have officially felt that first old man feeling.
The worst part about getting old is your life slowing becoming irrelevant.
@@xjohnny1000 It's not that hard to stay relevant, and experience is always a plus. As long as you're willing to learn.
There are millions of adults now that were not even born in the 90s.
20? your a youngin'
When I first started working with computers, these interfaces were the only ones I knew about. I agree with you, meseyc, this does make me feel OLD!
*slaps off-white computer case*
"This baby uses PS/2 ports."
"This thing can play PS2 games?"
Ironic cuz PS2 clone controlers for pc uses usb
When I first heard about a ps/2 port I thought the same thing. I still have that thought in the back of my mind whenever I see that port.
isint the ps/2 port a circular port that was once used for 1990s keyboard and mice?
@@IdiotStinky02 yes and Many modern desktop/tower computers still have such a port
@@tj71520 im sorry your about a month late
When Ajay Bhatt passes away, I think he's going to get trolled. The pallbearers will start to lower his casket onto the lowering mechanism, lift it up, turn 180° and then lower it again.
Lol
But then they will have to lift it up again, turn it another 180 and lower it yet again. That's always the way it goes...
:D Ain't it the truth!! Unless of course they mark one side of his body with the USB symbol (even then they'll probably get it wrong...)
They'll probably need to do that a few times before it'll work
Then they will have to open the casket to check the direction before they can lower it in the right direction
Why not UST? Trains are faster than buses.
Then USP?
Planes are Even faster
And for that matter, go for USJ
Jets are a thing
Capitán Capri sure
Why not usl?
Light is faster than any of them by lots.
what about USR? rockets are quick, but since they are not as fast as light they can be affordable!
Guys why not USD
I heard the data travels at the speed of dark
28 March 2019
I just installed a PCI-E WiFi card, and removed the dedicated graphics card, turning my worthless years-old gaming PC into an office PC.
Few months later, I got a promotion for providing the best office PC my company has ever seen.
>pcie
neck it, use SCSI
Do you work in a cave?
@@ryanwilson5936 Brothers of the mine, rejoice!
@@bjornerlendur4606 swing swing swing with me
@@p3chv0gel22 raise your pick and raise your voice!
My introduction to USB was via an ad on the back of a guitarrist magazine reading _"What's Universal Cereal?? And why's it on a bus?"_
A joke that never get's old.
The Universal Cereal is corn flakes.
@@greggv8 No it's rice crispies. Just ask the vinyl community. ! : )
My introduction to USB was back in the 80's when I bought an Atari 800 computer that used SIO connectors that were the precursor of USB, invented at Atari by one of the two gentlemen credited with the invention of USB (I forget which of the two it was though) Us Atari retro-enthusiasts have our SIO ports transfering at rates of 127K today, and we use SIO2USB adapters to communicate with a PC via USB to transfer or load files from "virtual" disk drives on the PC!
25 pins to transmit *_serial_* data.
Let that sink in.
Your profile picture matches my reaction.
There's a few reasons for that. First of all, USB uses its two data pins for data going both ways. Old serial ports, on the other hand, couldn't do that. There had to be separate pins for each direction. Additionally, both the computers and the devices you were plugging into them were a lot dumber, and couldn't do nearly as much stuff automatically. Most of the additional pins are there for the computer or device to state that they are ready to send or receive information. Sending that over the data pins would have been possible (it's only about a byte of information), but parsing that information requires a lot more engineering compared to just checking whether the voltage on a particular pin is positive or negative as you need it.
25 pin serial, and 9 pin serial actually only used 2 pins for data, the rest were signal ground, flow control and out of band signals (like ring indicator)
Twenty-five pins, but sometimes only four were connected and only three wires used. There were a multitude of configurations with devices needing different connections.
I told that sink the plummer would be there ON FRIDAY, I'm not letting him in!
Ugh, I remember plugging in the mouse in with an godly sized plug that needed screwing in.
At least those cables and connectors were very strong and did not break like all the current flimsy USB cables and sockets.
You screwed it in and could lift the entire machine with it. Same for the VGA (D-sub) and DVI ports. Once they're in, they stay in, unlike HDMI which comes lose just from turning the monitor.
@@HappyBeezerStudios ... I am terrified every time I have to unplug a HDMI plug because I never know if it will go in and work again. Hate them! I have even gone as far as buying an extra media box so I can have one for my projector and another for the TV so I don't have to swap the cables all the time.
IBM AT ... It was an acronym for "Advanced Technology" - That is why everyone (including IBM themselves) pronounced it "I B M A T" as in each separate letter, not the word "at."
Actually, that isn't an acronym. Acronyms actually spell out words, or sounds that can be spoken as if words, like RADAR, NIC (Network Interface Controller), or BASIC (Beginner's All Purpose Symbolic Instruction Code) for example. AT, and XT are just initials for Advanced Technology, and eXtended Technology (though it should have been the PC ET in that regard), or Windows NT (for Nice Try or Not Today).
If it were an acronym it would be pronounced like the word "at." What you are talking about in an initialism.
Aybimat
Funny how Apple is never part of these standardisation groups.
They've always done it "their way", leading to tons of obsolete hardware.
In the end they follow the standards, albeit a few years later :)
Boooooo Apple.
They use USB on their Macs and their iPads. Rumors say that they will start using it on iPhone too.
Apple was one of the first manufacturers to use USB, the first to ship all notebooks with 802.11 networking as the base config, they helped intel develop thunderbolt, was part of the development of ieee 1394 and so on. Yeah all those were years ago but still valid things
To their credit, the original iMac bet heavily on USB pretty early on, and that was one of the things that really popularized it.
Before that, their keyboard and mouse connections were generally done through ADB (Apple Desktop Bus), a system that allowed daisy-chaining and used a round 4-pin mini-DIN connector. The biggest problem with it besides being proprietary was that it wasn't safe to plug or unplug devices with the machine turned on (though people did it anyway).
Except they still have proprietary RAM so they can charge twice as much as PC RAM costs. It's the effect of using Big Endian memory architecture.
And USB-C is VERY VERY slowly choking USB...
At least this one always inserts itself on the first try !
USB-C is USB, what the hell are you talking about?
@@FateStorm The ports are different.
Although I'll admit the technologies used are EXTREMELY similar, they have many differences, and Thunderbolt USB-C have the most differences.
For exemple, there's no longer a master/slave structure.
@@FateStorm He's talking about USB 3.0. USB-C is the child of Displayport and USB 3.0
You all are bunch of uneducated people. First if all, there is USB-A, USB-B and USB-C. USB-A and USB-B have Micro and Mini prefixes, and then just no prefix. then there are versions of them. USB 1.0, 2.0, 3.0, 3.1, 3.2.
@@liamwelsh5565 No it isn't... Completely.
I rely on subtitles often and this video is great for having them and NOT auto-Generated.
I keep CC open, always nice to see when creators actually sub their videos! none of that auto generated trash!
I'm late but it's also nice that it's not in korean for absolutely no reason
It doesn't always match what he says, which is awkward for someone like me who can hear somewhat.
I love the easter egg at the end :)
@@MoonLiteNite they get better everyday from it's learning algorithms. Providing captions make it so the auto generated captions can be more accurate as they learn what it "sounds like"
USB, Unicode, HTTP, these are the miracles of modern technology
No u
Indoor plumbing. Safe food in the grocery store. Vacuum tubes. Silicon. Medical care. Mass-production. Space travel.
USB, Unicode, HTTP would not have been possible without the above things that, again, we take for granted.
And electricity, to our homes, in a safe and reliable supply.
Samuel Prevost miracles are luck. These are innovation. It requires effort to invent.
Don't forget about modern encryption...where would we be without AES, RSA, TLS, SSL, etc.
I remember these days well - having to load serial port drivers high to conserve as much base memory as possible, eliminating IRQ and DMA conflicts with sound cards and serial ports and transferring files between computers with parallel cables.
Meanwhile, video (display) ports have gone the opposite direction rather than the simplification and standardisation across devices of USB.
If we could just cut it all down to HDMI and VGA I'd be happy
(I know some people are happier with analog connections rather than digital)
@@SuperTux20 hdmi is terrible, displayport is much better, as for analog ports dvi is much better than vga
@@IANSYT DVI-A isn't much better than VGA; it's the exact same signaling in a subtly different connector. Connectors like DB13W3 used coaxial connections to really preserve analog signal integrity. Incidentally, USB type C has generated a new generation of confusion with different cables and devices doing different things on the same connector; very recently HDMI over type C thankfully died (as has HDMI type B), so type C now has only about 6 different protocols left just for video signals. It's not really helping that every minor revision of USB seems to rename the existing protocols, having started in the perfectly insane order low-full-high-super...
I got my CompTIA A+ in 2001. Had to learn all about IRQ and DMA deconfliction. Not that I remember how the details now.
Thanks for this nostalgia splash! I have some comments, though. At 1:53 - this is actually a 16-bit ISA card, in a slot that accepts 8-bit and 16-bit ISA and 32-bit VLB cards (at 2:13 one can see the shorter, 8-bit-only ISA slots). Also, the card at 3:46 is an I/O card, which in addition to serial and parallel ports has pin connectors for hard disk, floppy disk, joystick (I assume the "game" port refers to that), and another COM port (the third pin header being for jumpers to configure the board).
In the days before home Wi-Fi, I remember soldering together a very long (trying to think if it was 7 metres or 10 metres) RS232 cable so that my flatmate and I could connect our PCs of the time and play Doom against each other ... it was so much fun playing against each other in different rooms ... I swore at him so much lol
But with modems you could call your friend modem and play.
@@tomf3150 but with a null modem, you don't tie up your phone line. Also OP says flatmate, meaning they were in the same apartment and likely had one phone line, wouldn't really be as efficient/easy as just a null modem cable and IPX packet driver. :3
My friends dad worked as the IT guy at a large company so he always brought home the latest and greatest networking gear for us to play with. I remember looking at a rack mounted 100mb switch and drooling.
...I miss LAN parties.
me and a friend used to dialup into each other’s computers and play. super fun.
My neighbour and I did the same thing between our houses with a super long cable, so we could play Populous and Stunt Car Racer. Now that was laggy!
I've never heard AT pronounced as "at".
Me neither.
I've always pronounced it, /ahy'tee/" :-O
well you have now :p
for this very reason, it bugged the crap out of me early on every time i heard someone say "SAY-tah" for sata. Chances are, the person pronouncing it that way was not into computers when it was just ATA.
Because nobody pronounced it like that back then.
i wonder how he'd pronounce XT.
ksst?
Who remembers connecting 2 PC's together with a serial cable and using "LapLink" software in dos to transfer files between machines at a whopping 115k.
I did that, but not for LapLink. I used it for DooM, the first Command & Conquer and Red Alert games with a friend, and briefly for Jedi Knight until we upgraded our modems to 56k and moved on to IP games, and later the Zone.
Good times. I do miss the old days, but I do still use a lot of oldschool console copiers, so at least I still get to fiddle with floppies and parallel.
f29 retaliator. Couldn’t use the network, but did use a null-modem serial canle for two-player gaming. My graduation took a lot longer because of it
Nope, but I do remember X-Tree Gold!
The Norton Commander could connect 2 PC's as well for file transfer.
I just opened pornhub on both PC's and used FapLink
Ports have been standardized to single USB. But I still can't manage my wires. The back of my PC looks like Pubic hair.
so am i.after 25 years ,i still cannot put them in order.
Back then "cable management" wasn't a thing.
I believe I heard "rats nest" well over a thousand times during my youth. Once you got a piece of gear actually working, you never touched ANYTHING for fear of it crashing.
i dont give a damn about cable mangment because i only care about if the pc works or not.
@@badspy100 Its simple. See the square holes on the metal plug then if the holes appear solid black then its the right way. if the square holes are white/dark gray/blue then turn your x postition 180[degreess] right/flip over.
@@restlessgoose i am talking about cable management. lol
I remember SCSI (Small Computer System Interface "Skuzzy")
i know about SCSI only because my SATA to USB adapter shows up as UAS (USB attached SCSI).
But that makes it:
Universal Serial Bus Attached Small Computer System Interface for Serial Advanced Technology Attachment
USBASCSIFSATA.
Find me a longer acronym, I dare ya.
Don’t banks and high security data still use SCSI?
I hated the thickness of SCSI cables but back then it was a superior connection
@@bwgti SCSI provides no extra security. But from the 1980s until the 2010s, hard disk factories have consistently refused to sell their fastest drives (10000 rpm and 15000 rpm) with the IDE/ATA/SATA/USB interface, forcing high speed computers to install SCSI/SAS adapters. Similarly very few companies were selling adapters for plugging in more than 8 disks without SCSI.
Yeah, and where is that f**king terminator!!!
Nobody misses configuring IRQs and DMA addresses to try to fix hardware incompatibilities!! Oh what's that, you bought a new printer? Now your sound card doesn't work! Oh you bought a new graphics card? Now your modem is crashing!
I'm getting a cold sweat just thinking about it.
shit m8, that sound horrible, i'm glad i came after that time...
> IRQs and DMA addresses
Ah, the good old days of the *original* "Plug and Play".
Don't forget editing autoexec.bat and config.sys!
PnP used to really mean "plug and pray" :p
“missing” would be overstating it, but my was it satisfying to get it to work. Oh, and add a good himem configuration to that... bliss
@@photovincent I haven't thought of himem in almost 25 years... Crap that's depressing 😂
Somebody needs to invent a Cereal Port for computers. Think about controlling breakfast with a specialized port.
Imagine overclocking your cereal lmao
now introducing intel flakes. compatible with any cereal port. order NOWW
Windows Cereal XP
And I get beer with the tab key.
para lel
Ahhh i remember the days when we used to call usb useless serial bus.
I swear i saw once a really early 90's compaq with an usb and a ps2 port guess it was a 486
Can't have been early 90s. USB didn't exist back then.
That battery is about to spew its guts all over that motherboard. Get it out of there!!!
I was thinking the same thing!
8:28 having midi on the joystick port actually killed 3 birds with the one stone as the midi connection could be used by joysticks for force feedback.
*connects joystick to sequencer and plays a song*
Annoying part of bundled joystick port into the sound card is you can only have 1 joystick port and most clone cards did't have more than 1 port, not that i knew of.
The problem got complicated as you can't install another card due to resources compatibility issues.
I still remember before that older program can access 2 joystick ports for same/split-screen 2-players game.
For example: Microsoft GW-Basic supports 2 joysticks, using its STICK & STRIG functions.
Game port were IRQ driven and that was cool cuz no input lag. On the other hand allocating irq was a nightmare, and usually several devices/components/peripheral had to share the same irq.
That's why it's a personal computer ;) If your friends want to play, tell them to bring their own and network (or serial link) it all up!
You could buy a cheap 2 player adaptor for midi ports
Once again, RUclips brings me to something "educational" that properly belongs in the horror genre.
Serial ports are still alive and well. They may be less common on your average home PC, but there are still a lot of devices that have them for control and monitoring. Things like industrial controllers, and POS equipment still use it. As do things like commercial satellite receives and dish movers like your local cable company uses to receiver the TV channels they rebroadcast to you. It"s also a common interface for device programmers and things like JTAG adapters. The reason why, is because it's easy to interface to, from a hardware point of view, but even more so from a software point of view. In modern day protected mode operating systems you can easily write software that talks directly to a COM port. YOU SIMPLY CANNOT DO THAT WITH USB. To do the same with USB, you'd have to write a device driver and you'd have to write one for every device you connect. Then you'd have to make your software talk to the driver. And you'd have to get the driver signed by microsoft or else Windows will complain about it. It's a lot more complicated than using the serial port. And on top of that, for low speed devices that don't require massive bandwidth, it's actually less efficient and performs far worse, because USB is a polled bus and not interrupt driven like the COM ports are. If you have a low bandwidth device connected to a COM port that only occasionally sends and receives simple commands, the PC can pay it no attention and do other tasks when there is no activity. When activity occurs it will get an interrupt and can respond then. With a polled bus like USB, the system has to constantly check for activity. This is a huge waste, especially for a device that only needs to send a few bytes back and forth every once in a while.
And many of the truths we cling to depend entirely on our point of view... (grin)
True, many embedded systems use them. I think DOS made these old ports more difficult to use, partly because of DOS itself but also the plethora of flexibility.
I have to set up printers for use in Point of sale that use serial ports to communicate, also Grocery store receiving uses EDI technology called DEX to communicate with vendors making delivery with handheld devices..
Some POS peripherals I've seen physically connect over USB, but appear and act like COM devices.
Took me back to the days of using a null modem cable and ZIP drive :D What I found fascinating was that initially serial communication was inferior, and all the fast technologies used parallel data transfer. And then things changed, and everything went serial (SATA, USB) and outdid parallel technologies.
PhilsComputerLab Makes me wonder, if parrallel was still being developed today, no matter how unrealistic that is, what form would it take? How fast would it be? Would people find a use for it?
The problem with parallel is that because you have so many wires transmitting data in close proximity to one another, interference becomes a huge problem as you increase cable length or speed. Serial allows for better shielding.
Perhaps parallel could be faster with the proper shielding, but it would be about as thick as eight USB cables bundled together, which isn't practical. If you do that, you might as well use eight USB cables and drive eight times as many devices.
You are talking about PCI Express, up to sixteen serial lines running in parallel at a speed of 16GB/s (V.3)
Phil I still used dial-up up until 2001-2002. During the turn of the century everyone was using PCI based WinModems that totally sucked up CPU resources and were generally slow. I did everything I could to round up a serial based hardware modem and it was simply better than those WinModems. It had to be powered but that was a small nuisance.
David Alan I Han an external US Robotics. All the magazines recommended it.
2:26 Pronunciation note: nobody ever said "at" to refer to the AT, they always said each letter individually, "aay tee" as contrasted with the older technology, which was XT
Caught on that too.
2:25*
XT --> zzt?
"ecks tee"
Yup. IBM PC AT. And ISA was either I.S.A. or ISA (eyesah).
It was fun when you went to unscrew the little thumb screws and both the screw and the part it screwed into both unscrewed out. :-/
Still happens with VGA and DVI cables quite a lot
Yup that happened a lot so you kept your nut drivers handy.
And then the nut would fall out and possibly short out your card. Those thumb screws were a nightmare also because they'd catch on every cable, making it impossible to pull the cable out from under your desk.
My favourite was always the clueless customers that tugged and tugged on their monitor cables until the port was physically ripped from the board; and then they'd get all shitty when you pointed it out to them.
Happened to me when upgrading my motherboard...
PS2 remember so many people bending the pins on a mouse or keyboard because they were ramming them in the wrong way.
A very common problem!
sounds kinky
@Barthy Col
USB. 50/50 chance of getting it right and you get it wrong 100% of the time.... even after intensely staring at both ends of the connection. lol
PS/2 wasn't meant to be plugged and unplugged frequently.
Which is kind of a problem for laptop users wanting to unplug the mouse so the connector doesn't brake off when they carry the laptop around
I should also point out that the first generation of printers and scanners which used USB 1/1.1 were horribly unreliable and gave USB a bad name which took a while for it to overcome. Useless Serial Bus is how many called it.
Great video. No one in the USA called the IBB advanced technology the "at" machine. It was always referred to as the letters "A-T". I bought one around 1986. It was killer expensive and upgrading memory took a card and the chips were... er... killer expensive.
So many companies involved in making the USB and still no one considered making it visually asymmetrical. And it's never the first try and amazingly never the second try either, even though the thing only has two possibilities. Good thing it keeps evolving though, now there are asymmetrical versions.
I still think jacks would be better as even though the new USB is reversible that just means it can be plugged in two ways instead of 1, a jack has no orientation. If modern jacks can carry 4 or 5 rings and USB only has 4 connections then they missed an opportunity to create a bus that is as foolproof as a headphone jack and even a toddler could plug in easily.
It's already visually asymmetrical given there's a bar of plastic on one side. People just don't bother to remember which direction their ports face.
diegofloor
i.imgur.com/7ULpwu4.jpg
USB-A was always supposed to be the end that stays plugged into your machine, while USB-B, the one with slanted bottoms, was the one that was supposed to get plugged and unplugged all the time. The common mini and micro USB are technically considered USB-B, and you may find the old big USB-B even on modern printers.
@@krashd USB C is reversible and has 24 pins, and it can charge a laptop.
do a video about how bad "plug and play" and usb in general was when it first came out. in hindsight i am amazed at how well named usb actually turned out to be.
Your comment just make me remember about Bill Gates and his engineer introducing Windows 98 Plug and Play capacities with a scanner that produced a blue screen. This one a Kodak moment an token in video:
ruclips.net/video/LfNQOOr9aR8/видео.html
At the end it was the scanner fault, lol
Saw the title and said to myself. "What a dumb question, of course we had this mess of gameports, serial ports, DIN ports, PS/2 and all other things both standard and proprietary. Who doesn't remember that?" Then it occurred to me. When was the last time I had a computer without USB ports? It doesn't seem like that long ago that USB made computing so much easier, but it's really been a long time hasn't it?
Just got my very first PC -- as in desktop -- with no other ports onboard but USB, and Ethernet and an unused DP. Not even a PS/2 port anymore.
It's a strange new world.
I'm still a holdout for dedicated PS/2 keyboard port.
A PS/2 keyboard could still be used to operate the machine when USB just wasn't working. Maybe it's an old problem already solved long ago, but I still like having the fallback - even if it's only ever used to access BIOS and toggle the "Legacy USB" option - because not having PS/2 when you _need_ it can be crippling.
P
yeah it's solved long ago. To do what you suggested anyway. Haven't had a BIOS/UEFI that didn't respond to USB Keyboards ever.
The problem was more with operating systems. Like Windows XP/7 not having drivers for your USB controller and thus not recognizing your keyboard.
If that's fixable by "Legacy USB" (usually isn't) you could still do that with only a USB keyboard.
Still use PS/2 as well tho. In theory it's still better. True N-Key rollover and in theory lower input lag, as PS/2 can directly interrupt your CPU, USB can't.
But I just use it, because the cheap OEM keyboard I'm using is PS2 and I can't be bothered to switch to something "better".
Max Mustermann Agreed. And even NKRO is a non-issue these days ... except on the very cheapest and junkiest of keyboards.
26KRO (or better) is available on many USB keyboards ... and I don't have 26 fingers to type with anyways, lol.
The first mainstream computer to use USB was the original Apple Bondi Blue iMac from 1997 and that was a little over 20 years ago now. That means that their may likely be a not insignificant portion of the audience for this video that was born on or after the 1st mainstream USB equipped computers or who was to young in the early early to mid 90’s to remember what sort of ports the family computer used back then.
I remember when USB first came around. The guy at my local computer shop told me about it - and I couldn't quite believe it. It sounded amazing and so cool. First time I used one it was so amazing not having to mess with DMA and IRQ settings. Honestly would have never believed that they would have been as prevalent as they continue to be today at the time.
.....mean while Mac OS users have NEVER had to deal with IRQs.... So it’s ironic when people think of Mac OS as the inferior OS. Sure, it’s not as designed for games as windows is, but Mac OS can do things windows isn’t as good at as well.
Aaron Powell Macs aren't inherently bad they just don't cater to the people that want customization and tinkering that you can get with PC. If you like your system out of the box, Macs are good I guess... If not overpriced.
Actually back in those days you could customize Macintoshes really easily. My Powermacintosh G3 had all kinds of expansion options. It had PCI slots, an AGP Slot, and some other slots I don't quite know what they were. but non customizable macs are something from the recent past.
Also USB is Plug N Play hot swappable. Fucking amazing at the time it came out.
Dragon Chrysophy are you forgetting how customisable the first Mac was 😛😛😛
This was nostalgic for me. I taught Data Communications at local colleges in the nineties. I got into it from teaching official Novell networking classes but when I moved to Microsoft certified courses I also began teaching general data communications. Most of my course was a detailed examination of communication protocols which got me into teaching pin outs which in turn got me into identifying connectors. Most of the students were trying to prepare for being some kind of on-site microcomputer hardware guy at some of the many new companies then starting up.
I was then a manager of such people in my day job and I knew that to be accepted as a PC guru you had to recognize the various cables and connectors. The guru must never say "What the hell is that?" when confronted by a strange cable. And in those days there was a lot of diversity. So I began collecting weird and obscure wires and plugs. I then started to bring them to class and have quizzes to see who could identify them. This was always fun. It was certainly more interesting than my lectures on data packet formats.
I’ve never heard the AT pronounced “at”. I’ve only ever heard people call it “a-t”
John Pattillo it is A-T. Like AT ST AT AT.
he's english/British they say everything wrong.
@Ninja Master... British say everything wrong? He says it wrong yes, but it's not the British that are prone to pronounce words wrong... have you ever heard an American pronounce Jaguar? Or aluminium? Just a couple of examples...
Everyone calls those Imperial walkers "at"-"at"s, not "a-t" - "a-t"s
micglou shj-ag-wahr and al-loo-mini-um
That ain't right either. Ever notice british accents disappear when they sing?
Yeh I mean, if AT is "at", then what is XT? ;)
This makes me feel old and I'm not even 30 yet. Excuse me while I go clean the gunk from my ball mouse.
Apple: what about no?
Just buy overpriced adapters from us
It worked for the apple pockets.
They introduced lightning because USB C took to time.
there is something i am missing in this video, and pretty relevant. The fact that before plug and play, every connection has to been set manually in facts of DMA and IRQ, sometimes forced using jumpers or dip switches next to the cables
Cochese ...and terminator plugs for the internal flat flex cables.
oh the days when something went wrong and spending hours troubleshooting jumpers and irq settings and everything else with no internet and only manuals and you own experience
@@thatdumbguy6171
But ... you could trouble shoot it.
Today if the modern Plug&Pray driver just refuses to work, you are doomed.
It may have been worth mentioning the USB->PS/2 adapters many keyboards and mice were shipped with in the early 2000's to help support old PC's. I have a small container full of those things!
The old ports are some of the old timey things I feel absolutely no nostalgia toward-- they were just awful.
Those old serial ports are one of the ways to transfer files downloaded from the Internet onto systems that normally would not be able to access the 'net. A null modem cable and a terminal program on the PC and the receiving computer lets your PC sorta work like a BBS or otherwise ftp server.
Only to morons. Serial port were very versatile.
Tbh i like having a hardware com Port instead of a virtual one over USB, even though i sometimes need some level shifters for the logic
Usb type c is a thing of beauty.
...for people that never figured out that "logo side up" works XD
Capta Praelium not all ports are right side up.
Then they are not USB ports. The alignment of the ports is in the spec, that's why "logo side up" always works.
Keep in mind that "up" isn't *your* "up", it's the device's "up".
Yes, but there's not a consistent "up" between all devices of the same form factor. I have tablets and phones where the USB ports are aligned towards the screen, and ones where they are aligned away from the screen, since it all comes down to which way up the board goes, which can often depend on which way most economically uses the space within the case.
Exactly, it's the device's 'up'.
"Splendid" is not exactly the word I'd use for the connector chaos that reigned before USB! 😃 But it was indeed kind of fun to figure this crap out back then. I remember being super proud when I managed to connect two computers via their parallel ports and set up Windows 98 correctly to allow transferring files.
Ha! I remember when we had to install add-on cards to add some of those ports to computers, and was relieved when they started putting those headers on the motherboard. Heck, I remember being impressed with PS/2 ports when they were introduced ("Gosh" I thought. "Those PS/2 ports are so small!")
Ahh, yeah! Legacy connectors... Those glorious days of bulky and indestructible (dodgy micro USB, anyone? :P) connectors... :D
THose evenings where you'd jury-rig a crossover CAT5 UTP for a multiplayer session, or bend that ground pin on your VGA connector to have it fit...
Yeah, those days a baller PC had all its slots full of all sorts of exotic expansion cards, the more obscure, the better :P
Sebastian Bemrose Right in the feels, bro..
One thing the designer of the USB plug wants shooting for is the 50/50 chance you have of getting it in the socket the right way around ... grrr!
Same way with every other serial device.
You think that's bad. Thing about the DIN and PS/2 connectors.
It may be 50/50 but everyone's a liar if they say it doesn't take the 3rd try to get it right.
they were not that bad the plugs were round and usually had a flat side which went to the top but you did have to power off the computer before changing a keyboard or mouse for them to be detected as they were how hot swappable
On the one hand, there weren't really any computer ports before USB-C (and Lightning) that worked either-side up. On the other hand, the fix companies came up with to make symmetrical USB-A plugs was so simple you wonder why the designers never thought of it to begin with.
Me: it has 2 USB 2 ports 4 USB 3 ports and 1 Ps/2 por--
friend: so it can play Ps/2 games?
stolen
@@sidewinder3411 ok? not like anyone cares.
@@sidewinder3411 Jokes can't be stolen, they can only be shared, because someone says a joke and someone else thought it was very funny and decides to share it doesn't mean it's stolen. By the way, does "stealing" a joke hurt people monetarily like how real stealing does, I'll let you answer that.
You only gave SCSI a passing mention, when I worked on making computers for video editing in the late 90's, SCSI and SCSI hard drives were King, everything had to have them.
I actually had a SCSI hard drive back on a Win98 machine.
And there's were so many variants of SCSI ports as well.
Well, I was 6 at the time so god knows what type of SCSI port I had. I was good enough with PCs to run down most of the specs, but not good enough to open the thing up and know exactly what port was what.
Yeah, and technically you could connect everything using SCSI, not just storage devices or scanner.
And SCSI was capable for features 20 years ago they now sata praise for...
SCSI was popular because it was great, but it was basically a flash in the pan in the history of technology. So I can see why it only got a passing mention on a video of the tech that basically made it so obsolete so quickly. I remember when everybody thought SCSI was going to replace everything. Turns out USB did that.
USB C and we've finally made it, you can power, transfer data, plug in peripherals, and transmit video in high def on USB. It only took 1/3 of a century! lol
It's not over yet! ;D
The good old days of multiple kinds of connectors. I can do that again with my pentium 1 laptop i bought this week. It has no usb.
Pure nostalgia
that soldered on battery on that board looks flaky , remove it
Its leaking badly... typical for VARTA crap.
yup
Remove it anyway because soldered in batteries are bad design by nature.
That battery is near to 35years old... Varta once made very good batteries, but this changed to crap in 2002, when the Varta battery brands where sold to "Johnson Controls" and "Spectrum Brands".
I've seen worse
3:57 I can't get over this advert
You should have used 4:04 because of meme purposes and it actually shows the picture you meant
Having the woman just lay on the table with the pc is just awkward to say the least.
@@persomnus Floor, not table. That's where we all assembled our PCs.
I was too young to live in a time of multiple expansion cards but i still like the visual of a bunch of slots being used by expansion cards. so much so that i when i started building an injest machine for converting all the physical storage (cd,dvd,vhs) to a server i went all out and have almost ever slot used up. it looks great.
If I remember correctly USB was not so resource-saving in the beginning, compared to serial connections.
Old serial mice and keyboards were more popular with gamers for a while (because of the polling rate of USB Mouse)
This is still the case, because PS/2 hardware functions as a hardware interrupt instead of being polled like USB hardware.
Hello,
Yes, of course, I meant something else.
Earlier in Pentium and K6 times this was really relevant with increasing CPU performance and better implementation in chipsets this became irrelevant over time.
The gaming part that has lost importance over the years also today allows any keyboard/mouse to change the polling rate etc.
But for a while, it was really a big thing
My motherboard in early 1997 had USB headers, but they weren't hooked up by default.
One thing I wish USB could do is have a USB 3 link to a hub and then multiple USB 2 streams off of that hub have the full USB 3 bandwidth to the computer.. instead the link runs at single USB 2 stream speed for USB 2 devices
"What did we do before this miraculous connection became commonplace?"
Suffer.
"...The rest of us probably dont care..."
I care sir, I care.
The year is 1999, the day is December 25th, and we had just gotten to my grandparents house for my 16th Christmas on earth. My Grandfather has excitement in his eye, I know that means he got someone something good. He could barely contain himself as he hands me my gift. I slowly open it while my mind races with the possible options inside inside this pandoras box. Pulling back the wrapping paper I see "lex...DPI..." I remove the paper and realize its a brand new Lexmark flat bed scanner with the highest resolution and all the DPIs the 90s had to offer.My grandfather wasn't exactly tech savvy (being born in 1919 and all) but with the coaching from family and the Circuit City employee - he knew he had something special. At the time professional level digital photo scanning for the average consumer was still expensive and still quite new. I had just gotten into photo manipulation and Photoshop so this gift was super awesome. Imagine my dismay when I realize it comes with the newest/fastest industry standard - USB. My PC at the time DID NOT have this fancy new connection ( I didnt tell my grandfather since it probably would have broken his heart). My smile was real when I said "THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU I CANT WAIT TO USE IT". I eventually convinced my parents (about a year later) to buy a new PC with USB..
It took me a year but god damnit I used that scanner and I loved it.
I bought a USB scanner in the late 90ies as well - it came with a simple USB controller card right in the box.
Great story!! I remember talking my parents into buying a Star NX-2420 Rainbow printer for our Commodore-64 with a non-Commodore configuration (parallel port?) and a Commodore interface, for about 50 bucks more, in anticipation of having a PC in the future...once I got my PC in 1995, I used that printer for years until I got an inkjet, lol..also, cut my teeth on Aldus Photostyler, shortly before Adobe bought them out...put my butt in the museum with the other relics!!
and so we're back to square one, with a million different USB types.
They are 5 types at most. www.memorysuppliers.com/blogs/memory-suppliers-blog/guide-to-the-differences-between-mini-usb-micro-usb-and-usb-c
HAHA! Yep! And USB2 devices don't always work in USB3 ports.
@@andywolan isn't it the other way around?
@@arsenii_yavorskyi Both actually. USB3 devices are supposed to be USB2 compatible sometimes don't work on USB2 ports.
they're all compatible though
These serial ports had one great advantage .NO DRIVERS REQUIRED
The USB spec is a mess
Maybe it was better that way !
Serial ports still require drivers on platforms like Windows.
I need no extra drivers on Linux, although partly _because_ I choose most of my devices for plug-and-play Linux compatibility.
...Actually, on second thought, the dreaded printers need drivers. Are you talking about printers? Those are the worst. Everything else works fine though: keyboards, mice, webcams, storage media, some wireless adapters, card readers...
@@happysmash27 That's because the linux kernal is a monstrosity that includes the drivers for every device ever created.
As someone who deals with industrial computers and controllers, 9 pin serial is still used to this day.
it's used because a lot of companies are too cheap to lose the money from down time and the cost to upgrade to use modern technology. Eventually they all have to upgrade because once your shit from the 80s or 90s breaks then you're dead in the water.
I'm a controls engineer/system integrator (:
Actually, serial communications is robust, easy to understand and program, and ubiquitous. That's why it's still around.
Yep, serial is far from dead. However, that serial (normally UART) connection tends to go into a serial to USB converter on one end ;)
@@travcollier often those converters don't work reliably with old school serial products. i used to run automated camera controllers that used an old 9 pin and we had migrated to a new server that had no native 9 pin ports. i went through several different vendors for converters and each one of them would cause some weird error that resulted in non-function about 1% of the time. 1% was unacceptable for this application so instead just went for a pci 9 pin serial card and that solved the problem.
@@oldtwinsna8347 I never had any issues with FTDI serialUSB, but I was working with relatively modern microcontrollers mostly. The off-brand and counterfeit converter chips suck though.
I have never heard it referred to as "AT" before in the U.S. but always as two letters A.T. Is that A British thing?
Sean Corcoran nope. We British pronounce this as 'Ay Tee' not 'at'. Not sure why he calls it 'at' in the video. A personal quirk, perhaps.
It absolutely isn't. Don't know why but he mispronounces things an awful lot. Listen to be pronounces 'BBC micro' 'bibbycee' or even 'the' as 'vuh'. Drives me crazy
Gah I have no idea. It was always an 'Ay Tee' to me.
And then to make things WORSE, he calls DEC 'dee ee cee'. Urgh!
Yes, it's a British thing. They also call P/S2 "psst".
AT is 'Advanced Technology'. He's unusual in mispronouncing it. It's a fair bet that he doesn't say 'At-ex' for ATX. But if he's not old enough to have used AT boxes, and has only read about them, rather than being told about them, then his error is understandable. On the other hand, he also gets DEC wrong way around. Luck of the draw perhaps? His pronunciation of BBC is acceptable, since he has a particular regional accent.
I'll not be subscribing, because he makes a number of incorrect assertions in his videos, whilst glossing over important points, probably because of insufficient research of reliable sources. Wikipedia, for instance, needs treating with great care, because anybody can edit and post wrong information on there.
this video makes me feel older than the fact my favorite bands are now being played on classic oldies stations.....
Firewire wasn't an Apple-only thing. I have a Dell laptop with a mini Firewire socket, although in the PC world it is commonly known as IEEE 1394 or i.Link. Many Sony laptops also carried it.
srtgrayfrance It was developed by Apple but not exclusive to Apple.
It was heavily pushed by Apple/Sony, and adopted as standard DV connector for digital cameras.
IEEE 1394 is a serial bus standard that was collaboratively developed by Apple, Intel, Texas Instruments, Microsoft, Sun Microsystems, Compaq, and National Semiconductor
it was a real bus, it was low latency, it was DMA capable and it was HIGH Speed compared to USB.
But it was also expensive and only was used in professional equipment (the Apache attack helicopter) like audio and video equipment, and early external hard drives including the first 3 gens of apples iPod.
Nvidia Chipsets offered fire wire as a default. And many other PCs hat it too. And it was often the only way to get digital video of a miniDV camcorder.
@osp80 AFAIK the only thing it was used for was local multiplayer. Though I guess Sony was already buying the controller chips at sufficient volume for it to be fairly inexpensive. Possible even cheaper than adding ethernet.
I still have an early 2000s Sony digital camcorder, and it has a Firewire/1394 port. I never had a PC that I could plug it into... Always had to use the RCA connectors.
PC-AT (the a and t pronounced separately. It stood for Advanced Technology.
I think the "PC @" was the model between XT and AT - it used the 801.586 processor 😋
Yeah... He also said Windows 95 Service Pack 2 which does not exist. :D
And was not advanced at all with 286 and dirty Dos compared to 020 mac or amiga
@@keybizzoneg5209 it Is dubbed win97
@@keybizzoneg5209 : 95's second service Pack was referred to as "OSR2" or Original Equipment Manufacturer Service Release 2. IIRC, MS didn't refer to it's Service Packs on its consumer OS's as 'Service Packs' until Windows XP where they unified the consumer and enterprise workstation OS's into one lineage.
Thanks for the nostalgia trip! I sold computers and peripherals from the early 1990s to the early 2000s and witnessed most of this first hand. Now it's a USB-C world! I also had an Iomega ZIP drive and it had the dreaded "click of death"...
Kids these days...they don’t know how good they have it, USB was indeed a godsend.
They sure do have it good. Think back on:
Pre-on-demand-streaming.
Pre-wireless networking.
Pre-internet.Pre-DVDs.
Pre-DVRs.
Pre-mobile-phones.
Pre-compact-discs.
Pre-networking.
Pre-cordless-phones.
Pre-VCRs.
Pre-television-remotes.
Pre-microwave-ovens.
Pre-color-television.
Pre-television.
Pre-radio.
Pre-refrigerators.
Pre-electricity.
Pre-indoor-plumbing......
6:12 but smart watches were released 30 years later o.o
I remember using Laplink over serial, then later parallel which was amazing at the time. I always carried my laplink cables and software with me everywhere. I feel old.
I remember all those old cables. Do I miss them? Nope. Give me USB any day.
i like to keep a system with fdd, serial and parallel ports for those rare times i have to use low level programming stuff like motherboard bios chip recovery or old hardware.
USB and SATA have made a huge impact in the world of hardware. I remember needing a SCSI for an external hard drive, mouse on the serial port on my first computer- an "IBM 286 AT with PC Front End / DOS"
Nice overview, though as an Atari fan, I would have expected mention of the Atari SIO port, which was kind of a precursor of USB, being serial and allowing chaining of devices. And of course, its designer Joe Decuir also participated in the design of USB.
Yeah, the big-deal ports on the Ataris were the 9-pin game-controller port, which actually became something of an industry standard for a while (Commodore and Sega both used versions of it), and the SIO, which didn't. They sold an "Interface Module" that you'd put into the SIO daisy chain to provide RS-232 and Centronics parallel ports, because I think even some of the modems and printers they sold used those.
Dang...Am I _that_ old that people are now starting to ask what was used before USB? I was born in 1999 and even I remember life before USB was everything...
I was born in 1993. I grew up with Parallel and Serial ports as well as floppy disks and the age of the Soundblaster card. Don't forget, there was also firewire. :)
I was born in 1978.
I am born 62 and believe me, there was no need for this junk. And it took years to run flawlessly. USB was nothng than a cheap way for a bus system. And latest now everyone talks about IOT. We could have had this 20y earlier...
@TheLightskinPirate And connected to a Sound Blaster...
Hey I was two years away from finishing school in 99, you are definitely not that old.
What memories these ports brings in my mind. Keyboards and mouses, printers and casettes, soundcards and external drives.
I started with a C64... then a 386DX, DOS 6.2 and Windows 3.1.... and so my descent into madness began...
I started with a Timex Sinclair 1000, then a C=64, then a C=128, then a PC-XT, then a PC-AT (both running DOS 6.22), then a 286 (Win 3.1), then 386, then 486 (Windows 95),then 586, then Pentium 1 (Windows XP), etc...you can probably figure out where this is going. :-)
@@telephony a Pentium is a 586 :D
@@keybizzoneg5209 officially? Or just as a cool nickname
Huh. I thought the 15-pin game port originated as a MIDI port that got coopted into use for joysticks instead of the other way around.
Agamemnon2 No the official MIDI connector is another DIN connector, as seen on semi-pro and pro musical instruments.
It was confusing times. SoundBlaster's approach basically became the de facto standard because it worked really well, it cost less, and it was the most common/popular (thus most widely supported and compatible) implementation.
There were "official" specifications in the technical literature - which supported technically superior hardware usages and capabilities - but they were basically ignored by the PC world, people were building forward from what was proven to work best, not from what was formally designed to be more limited.
You can imagine how excited people were to see there serial ports on those old computers. I know how excited I am when I see my usb ports and audio ports and graphics card ports.
i miss the old days :(
Videos like this make me feel super old and I’m only 22.
Feywer Folevado Haha, same here. I’m 29, started to fiddle with computers and electronics at very early age (mid 90s). I feel really old when I watch video like these, where they talk about expansion cards, IRQs, null-modem cables and similar stuff that was just my regular everyday challange back in the days, like some ‘retro, vintage’ stuff...
You're not old. Wait till you get in you're forties.
+Chris Debnam Which I just did (turned 40 last week)... Funny to think, there are people of adult age at present who never knew of a time before the Internet, when I only got on it when I started university.
Videos like this make me feel super old, and i'm 51.
I'm 27, got my first own PC in late 1996. A used 486 running Win95. But I later downgraded to DOS because Win95 sucked. Even as a kid, I rather typed some commands instead of dealing with constant random bluescreens.
It does make me feel a bit old, but... it was the golden age. Since over 10 years now, everything basically stayed the same. Times were more interesting back then.
I switched from a Pentium 1 130mhz to a AMD Duron 700mhz. Over 5 times as fast. Next leap 1400Mhz Athlon. Then 2400Mhz Athlon XP (the one with real 2400Mhz, not just 2000 and 2400 Pentium Rating).
My first USB stick had 16mb and cost 15€, which was a brilliant deal back then....next one up was 128mb, 256mb, 512mb, 1GB, 2GB, 4GB...
HDD sizes, went from 2GB to 8GB to 40GB to 120GB.
You almost always doubled what you had.
I feel somewhat lucky to be an age where I got to see a lot of this change. My Dad had to work with older computers for a while, so it was fascinating to see all our keyboards, mice, etc go from these types of cables to USB when we got a brand new iMac in 2007. Mt dad still has a lot of those cables and parts, and it's fun to look back at those times with them
Wait... no mention of Atari's SIO port from 1978? The guy who made SIO literally states that it's the basis of USB, as he worked on both. It allowed nearly unlimited daisy chaining, uses the same cable for all expansion devices and even has the devices give intelligent ID's etc. Perhaps it deserves its own video as it's pretty amazing.
Don't get me wrong, I love your videos, but thought this should be known, as it was incredible at the time and was for decades (he was an Amiga guy too)
I was about to post the same. The history of USB goes back farther than the 1981 IBM PC. It was born in the Atari 8-bits.
I know it's probably nothing to write home about, but I really want to see a DOS machine load something off tape now. That just seems so alien and bizarre to me that i need to see it to believe it.
Be N S O N Theres lots of C64 and VIC-20 videos that show exactly that. Cant recall ever seeing a PC do tape though. Also alot of videos of PDPs running reels. Some IBM 360/370s too.
Be N S O N it's not for DOS it's for the on ROM OS only.
yeah, even our 286 had nothing of the sort back in the day :P
Hmmm... Tapes are still in use, not regular tapes but tape cartridges: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetic_tape_data_storage
well yeah but this would've been for cassette tapes like what the commodore used ;)
3:54 I remember those ports, I remember thinking how clever it was that they had colour coded them lol.
Many modern desktops still have PS/2 mouse and keyboard ports.
Faster response time for gaming, plus the major security benefit of not allowing the "Bad USB" attack where a fake memory stick pretends to be a keyboard and automatically types in the commands to hack your computer.
I love how I’m watching this as if I don’t know 🥴
Useful video! Most people are NOT hardware literate and vids like this help them learn. Those connectors have many other uses to but the vast majority of RUclips viewers are not techies and don't need to know them.
The very very first USB appeared in 1994 but started slowly to make it’s way out of the factory dour to became mainstream in 1998.
Kenny S yes yes that’s true but the prototype USB existed in 1994.
USB was in limited public use before Windows 98 was released. I tried using USB 1 devices with drivers in Windows 95, and later in Windows 98 but it was far too flakey to be of much use. Windows 98 SE support was a little better. Things improved a lot in 2000 when ME became available. So long as you kept your RAM below 256 MBytes!
Odd that he didn't mention Laplink. I still have a Laplink connector which enabled two Windows computers to 'talk' to each other via USB. Much slower and shorter range than 10 Mbps Ethernet, but it worked, if you had Laplink installed. I ran the free trial version for years, because for some reason it kept working after the trial period had expired.
RWBHere Yeah, I know what you mean; I recently tried to build a bit of a "modern retro" gaming PC running Win98SE out of a system that originally had Windows XP on it. I couldn't even get the USB 1 drivers working for it...
True, my Pentium MMX had 2 USB ports, what I needed for keyboard and mouse to install Crunchbang++ OS
I specifically remember being generally annoyed about USB stuff... as YES, the Windows.95b version has support... but getting support in Windows 95 was a major pain in the ass, as doing version updates of OS back then was... like getting a root canal done up. "Oh yeah... there is a way to get USBs to run in Windows 95... and literally the hoops you jump through actually make it much easier to just simply not use USB"
It wasn't until Windows 2K and Windows XP started having a decent market share that most computers were running that... that I did not feel like USB stuff was not a pain in the ass to run. (At which time, I was doing most of my stuff on Linux anyways... which has its own weird USB growing pains)
The reason USB took so long to get support is because Windows 95 did not support it by default. The Windows 95b version did not support it by default either. No machine with a standard install of Windows 95b could use USB ports. You literally had to pull out the install discs/disks for Windows 95b, begin and Install/Update process with it, and tell it to add USB support. Which... the Install/Update process for OS these days is a simple process... in the 90s it required a lot of annoying stuff, and generally was just as likely to fail as it would succeed. I remember install Linux for the first time in the 90s, and being amazed at how user friendly and intuitive the OS install process was by comparison... and... uh... yeah... that is an install process that generally is not available on most modern day distros for the express reason of it being archaic, clunky, and hard to navigate.
The days when connectors didn't just snap off.
I mean for most cases they did atleast one without screws, and pins were too easy to bend that ports and cables didnt last long.
I love when those plastic screws get stuck and i forget which way i need to screw them
No instead the pins would bend.
They can... If you're extremely careless.
Try plugging in USB ... oops, upside down.
Flip over, try again ... wtf, upside down again, extra attempt confirms.
Flip over, try again ... fits fine, weird.
oh. them memories from 2000+ .... i remember pluging the mouse and keyboard ... nightmare !
I longed for zip drive.. proper hankered after one. but by the time i finally could afford it. they'd been superseded by CDRoms.. There is something to be said for ps/2 keyboards/mice over their USB rivals.. speedwise.. I was gutted when I bought my last PC in 2008 (yes I know it's massively out of date now, but it still is working away) but there was no parallel printer port and my £1000 colour laser printer (yes £1000!!! in 2003) was parallel or network only, no USB on that.. I ended buying a parallel port I/O card, which works perfectly :)
Why didn't you use the network port?
You know, even most new motherboards have parallel port headers, eh?
I had an LS-120 - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SuperDisk
Big Fat Floppy goodness. I had an internal drive and an external drive but because my mates had neither I always had to bring my external to their houses to show them what was on the disks. Knowing 15 year old me it was probably filth in .mpg format.
For using the network port on the expensive printer there needs to be a cable forst. And a free port on the machine.
I bought a SCSI Zip drive for my Amiga. I had two power supplies die on me. The first one died when I unplugged it to move things around. It was unplugged for literally about two minutes and when I plugged it back in, it was dead. I forget how the second died.
My drive also developed the annoying click. It never damaged any disks, but it was rather annoying to hear it just randomly click while accessing a disk.
Yeah, I caught the tail end of the life cycle of these connectors when I was little, so I grew up watching as each one of those got gradually replaced by USB, and I remember what it was like to use them...
While it's certainly convenient that pretty much everything nowadays uses USB, I'll still gladly use a PS/2 Keyboard and mouse on my PC! It's good too because it frees up 2 USB jacks that I could use to connect gamepads~
I think I still have a couple of game controllers with that 15 pin connector though...
Michirin9801 you havent felt how it is to try to plug them in and accidentally bend the pins
God forbid your mouse accidentally comes out of the PS/2 port, you gotta reboot
I have actually, but only with a PS/2 plug... I just bent it back into shape with a pair of tweezers >w>';
Haha, loose connectors which easily wiggle free, fall out, and unplug themselves. A worn USB connector isn't any better ... it might actually be even worse ... except that 99% of the time it can be hotplugged right back in without much delay or much issue.
Although those anchor screws (on both ends of) old school serial/parallel/video ports were always awesomely secure. I'd love to see a return to this approach on hardware (like monitors, etc) which rarely gets moved or reconfigured.
I've actually plugged an old PS/2-to-USB adapter into my usually-unused PS/2 port ... to use it as a USB charging port. Only ~100mA but it works fine.
I remember running my BBS *WAY BEFORE* USB came into being.
Setting up interrupts, being certain that there are no IRQ conflicts, assigning COM ports, blah blah blah. :-)
How I long for the sound of a 300BPS, 1200BPS, or 2400BPS call coming through (and yes, I was one of those nerds who left the modem speaker on so I could hear my BBS's callers connecting -- and also yes, I could quite easily distinguish a 1200BPS caller from a 2400BPS caller).
And one of my test instruments from 2001 required a 16-bit ISA slot on the motherboard *AND* a parallel port (DB-25) connector for its security dongle.
"...this was another plug in card when expansion space may have been at a premium." As opposed to today where the vast majority of devices used have NO expansion slots at all (laptops and tablets almost never do).
I would like to see this mysterious tablet that has an expansion card, as I have seen a _phone_ with expansion cards (Librem 5) but never a tablet (unless MicroSD counts?). Do you know of any?
Is it possible for the microSD slot to function as an expansion slot? With the right software and peripheral?
@@nthgth I suppose it's possible if the chips are small enough. But most expansion cards also had external devices plugging into them.
@@nthgth I know full sized SD can, but micro?