[OT] USB KVM switches

[Tony Duell]

> Ok, so what I don't understand is how USB became a successful and
> widespread standard if it's such a pile of shit.  You and Tony,

Err, can you say 'Windows' :-)

> accomplished hardware designers both, think it's crap.  It's great that

My main objection, other than the fact that nothing I have supports it or 
can support it, is that it's typical of modern systems. It makes easy 
jobs (hooking up a printer, mouse, modem, etc) trivial, but more 
difficult jobs (homebrew interfacing) much more difficult. I can make 
something that links to an RS232 or Centronics port from the bits in my 
junkbox in about half an hour. I doubt I'd ever be able to do that with 
USB...

In general I dislike the idea of 'one size fits all' solutions. There's 
no good reason why a printer should use the same interface as a digital 
camera or a keyboard or a mouse or.... TO try to fit everything into one 
standard is likely to make things over-complex for no particularly good 
reason.

Then there's fact it's a very 'assymetrical' interface. What I mean is 
that given 3 devices with USB ports, it's not normally the case that you 
can link any pair together (unlike RS232 given null-modem cables). You 
have effecively 'master' devices like PCs and 'slave' devices like 
printers, mice, etc.

Think of the HP49G+ calculator which has a USB port in place of the RS232
port of older models. That will link fine to a modern PC. But it won't 
link directly to a printer. Or to a homebrew ADC interface. That's enough 
to keep me from buying that calculator.

And to think that when HP made an HPIB interface availabel for their 
calculators about 20 years ago (the 82169), it was by default a 
controller (that is, the calcualtor was the master device on the HPIB), 
but you could turn off the controller functions in software if you wanted 
your calcualtor to just be a device on the HPIB. Back then HP did things 
right...


-tony