Craig Steiner wrote:

"The industry has moved from one of the simplest--if not THE simplest--serial interface (RS232) that works on devices costing pennies"

How many times have you had to futz with things to get RS-232 to work? Do you need a straight-through cable? Or a null-modem cable? Or a cross-over cable? A gender-bender?

Jeez -- even thought there's an actual SPEC about this, it seems like peripheral manufacturers can't get it right. I'm most familiar with various audio processors, but it seems like every new serial device requires that cable dance.

"to a much more complicated serial interface (USB) which many components aren't capable of communicating with, requires more circuitry, and requires drivers on the host system that sometimes work, sometimes don't, and are generally available only for Windows leaving Linux users out in the dark."

Hey, I have some and can think of other serial devices which don't have Linux (or Mac OS) support. Let's see -- programming dongles from Xilinx. A nifty I2C EEPROM programmer from Microchip. The dbx DriveRack 260 DSP. A Rane DSP. BSS Omnidrives. A Video Instruments test-pattern generator box. Etc.

"But what happens when I want to put together some hardware that talks to my PC? Am I supposed to use a USB-capable chip every time and write a device driver for Windows (which I don't use) or Linux (for which I'm not proficient in writing device drivers)? Even those that happily use Windows would have to write a Windows program and a Windows USB driver to support their new hardware product."

You can choose from any of a dozen or more 8051 micros that have a built-in USB Serial Interface Engine. You don't have to do the most difficult stuff; the micros take care of it for you. Most of the chip vendors provide extensive application notes, example firmware, example host software, even a host driver. Cypress, with their EZ-USB series, is the big gorilla here (although their parts are typically the most expensive). Silicon Labs has a couple of USB parts. So does Philips. And TI.

Now, if your device conforms to one of the standard classes, then you don't need to write a host driver. A good example: say your device is a USB temperature sensor. You might think that there's no such USB Class, but it turns out that you can design a "report" format for your temperature sensor and use the HID class. No drivers needed -- all you have to do is to write a user-land app that handles the reports. This is about as complicated as writing a user-land app that talks to the serial port.

"I am constantly annoyed by my laptop (purchased in 2002) which doesn't include a serial port."

Well, look at it this way: us engineer types are NOT the majority of users. Quick: name a device that the Average Computer User would hook up using a serial port. Printer? Nope -- USB. Modem? Nope -- USB (or a PC Card). Mouse? Ditto. Yeah, some people still use USB to sync their Palms to their computers, but I think the newer PDAs all use USB.

"And I suppose it's only a matter of time before they decide they need to get rid of parallel ports, too."

Yep. Microsoft has already decreed it. (Macs never had 'em, anyways.) Anyways, all I use a parallel port for these days is for a Lattice or an Altera ISP dongle. I wish these things WERE USB; I only have one parallel port on the machine and I have to keep swapping them.

The printer is on an ethernet print server. Luckily, all of the software licenses are floating and no hardware dongles are necessary.

See, basically, USB wasn't invented to make your life difficult. It was invented because most users are confused. "Parallel? What the hell does that mean? How is it different from serial? And what do these stupid icons mean?" Of course, making things easier for the end user makes the developers work harder.

Besides, this is the same argument that was made when 32-bit Windows wouldn't let you directly access the hardware and you had to go through a device driver. "I just want to do an outportb(0x3f8, foobar); and be done with it! ARRRRGH!"

Rather than complain about USB -- embrace it. Learn how to design USB devices and how to write the firmware. Thars money in them thar hills!

--a