USB Universal Floppy Disk controller

[Vintage Computer Festival]

On Tue, 15 Mar 2005, Dwight K. Elvey wrote:

>  I tend to agree with you. We should be thinking this way.
> Still, I believe that development work should be done in
> an environment that is handy and convenient. The USB is
> just a machine interconnect. One just has to keep in mind
> what the final product will be like. In other words, don't
> lock the design into one specific format.
>  The only issue I have with USB is that it requires drivers
> for each machine it is connected to. These have to be
> specific to the USB device we use to interface with.
> RS-232 is generic enough that we could run things from
> text files using simple terminal modes on almost any machine.

I dispute Barry's assertion that serial is going away.  Perhaps in
consumer products it will be supplanted by USB.  But in development
products and applications, and low level controller and embedded system
devices, it'll be around for quite a while yet.

I'd argue that the serial port is the most under-rated device is
computing.  It is the most widely deployed communcations protocol and
allows computers 1 month old to connect and transfer data to computers
that are over 30 years old.

As for Dwight's main argument that the interface is not the main focus, I
agree.

-- 

Sellam Ismail                                        Vintage Computer Festival
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International Man of Intrigue and Danger                http://www.vintage.org

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