Mac Mini

[Tony Duell]

> USB is something of a miracle I'd have to say.  Many good success 

USB seems to me to be the interfacing equivalent of certain GUI-based 
systems, in that it makes easy jobs trivial and difficult jobs almost 
impossible. 

USB probably works fine if you want to do what the manufacturers 
intended. But if, like me, you want to hack about, it appears it would 
really get in the way...

I think I've mentioned before that my old-ish HP calculators have 
built-in RS232 ports. HP's intention was that you linked these to a PC 
and saved/loaded stuff (there's kermit and Xmodem in ROM on the 
calculator). But they work equally well to link to a serial printer or to 
a home-made data logger, or...

The replacement has a USB port. It probably works fine with a PC to 
load/save programs and data. But it won't link to a printer or to a data 
logger or.... 

Since learnign how to wire an RS232 cable, I've never had any problems 
with RS232 interfaces if the documentation is complete (and if it's not, 
it's not that hard to work out what signals are needed).

Of course the fact that none of my computers have, or could have, a USB 
interface is another matter....

Oddly, not being a programmer, I much prefer a command-line driven system 
to a GUI. 

-tony