Re:Why do USB-C hubs still have USB 2.0 ports? (2021)
by Someone on Wednesday May 11, 2022 @03:56PM
(#31344935)
> “If it connects, it should work" used to be largely true
Have you ever worked with DB-9 or DB-25 serial cables? If you had a cable that was wired correctly for the connection you wanted to make, it should indeed work, but you still would have to figure out baud rate, number of stop bits, and parity. Detecting what kind of null-modem cable you had basically came down to getting out your multimeter.
On PCs, you also had the traditional parallel port (mostly unidirectional, with IIRC two bits of information that a printer could send back: “don’t send more data; I’m busy handling the earlier data”, and “out of paper”) versus the much faster, bidirectional iteration that was used to connect such things as hard drives and CD players.
Have you ever worked with DB-9 or DB-25 serial cables? If you had a cable that was wired correctly for the connection you wanted to make, it should indeed work, but you still would have to figure out baud rate, number of stop bits, and parity. Detecting what kind of null-modem cable you had basically came down to getting out your multimeter.
On PCs, you also had the traditional parallel port (mostly unidirectional, with IIRC two bits of information that a printer could send back: “don’t send more data; I’m busy handling the earlier data”, and “out of paper”) versus the much faster, bidirectional iteration that was used to connect such things as hard drives and CD players.