Isn\'t it about time for USB?

Ya know, you're right. With the exception of occasional security patches or other addons I rarely do anything now to administer my BSD servers. I just realized one hasn't been updated in a while and checked the uptime - 707 days.


Contrast that to Win NT where I need to reboot a minimum of twice weekly. And a friend working at Hotmail once told me that the NT servers there are scheduled to reboot every 15 minutes, with about four minutes of that time the reboot.


I once saw an ad from M$ claiming that NT was better than Solaris and giving one reason - this company had two Solaris servers which both suffered hardware failures and went down at the same time, but the "NT server farm" was always up. I don't see how they claim that they are superior when in the ad they are clearly implying that a lot more than two NT servers are needed to keep up with two Solaris boxes!


73,
Brian
KB7OIE

 

I agree, I would like to see some ham manufacturers start using USB ports. I just upgraded my computer, and I couldn't find any PCI-bus serial expansion cards. (I was one of those who had added 3 serial ports and a parallel port to my old computer.)

However, I DID find two manufacturers of USB-to-serial (DB-9 and DB-25)adapters, Belkin and Keyspan. Using these devices lets me continue to use my legacy devices and also avoid IRQ conflict problems!

73

Mark
Just a thought.

 

What are you basing this statement on?

Speaking from experience as both a computer owner and operator, as well as an amateur radio owner and operator, USB has the benefits of flexiblity, that is plug and play rather than fiddle and diddle with soldering or screwing together wires,
far better speed and communications aptitude than seriel ports and has the ability to attach a multitude of devices via a USB bus.

Please clarify if I am indeed mistaken on these points. Any and all replies are welcome and will be considered educational tools on my part.

73s

Charles, AA1MN

 

Some people don't have that money for a e machine that doesn't work worth a crap. Why would a guy spend 600 bucks on a pile of junk when a DOS machine is working fine? There are places called computer recyclers that a guy can get a pent 2 amd 266 etc for 200 bucks. And will work win 95/98 great. Thats all you need to run any ham program out there now IE sound card/logging software. You dont need Thunderbirds or pent 4s to run PSK or logging. You can stimulate computer illterate hams by giving them this information and helping not whining about they run junk. A "Celeron or Duron 700 Mhz and FASTER" is way over the top for the ham computer user. And on top of that a guy adds in a 56K modem and you can run on the net just fine. Your comments are not fair maybe you should buy a few Durons for some hams?

 

I'll go one step further... I have a new Dell inspiron laptop...With 2000 ME... Guess what??? Can't use the serial port with any of my ham interfaces... Kam's, West Mountain interfaces... Problem is the wonderful minds at Gates central have the OS configured to turn the RTS/DTR lines to a high state as soon as windows loads... Aint that a bunch of happy nonsense... What this does is if HF rig is on and using a Rigblaster the transmitter keys instantly...Nice work they do... Its a good thing I retired years ago as I would fire all those programmers for stupidity...I have 3 Kams all messed up as the firmware must be hard reset on a good computer running Win/98...Oh well thats life with computers...73 Bud N9ML..

 

You are mistaken on those points.



Firewire has more flexibility than USB, there's no soldering or screwing involved (where did you get that idea????), it supports far higher speeds than USB, and can support more devices on a bus.



Basically, every one of your points was wrong.

 

As my teenage sons would say, "BAM, that's what I'm talking about."


Aside from packet, why would we need anything faster than the maximum speed available with RS232? Rig to rotor comm? Nah. Not enough data being transferred.</P>


On the other hand, USB is pretty convenient. I wonder how much overhead comes with that convenience? If you can, try to remember the "DOS" days. It didn't take a Cray just to load the OS in those days. We didn't have drag and drop capability and the word processors were pretty primitive by todays standards but the OS was stable and it wasn't a memory / hard drive pig. My point is that convenience comes at a price. Let's not get in too much of a hurry to get rid of something that works and is sufficient for our needs.</P>



73</P>



Mike,
WM5LL

 

Is that what is going on? I have a Dell Inspiron 5000 running W2k and I can't use my serial port UNLESS I delete it from the system and reboot. Once the OS loads the port works. If I restart without deleting it, it doesn't work.

I'm going to do some checking. There must be some kind of patch for it.</P>


73</P>


Mike,
WM5LL

 

The basis of my statements are based on USB cable and ports as compared to Seriel cable and ports.

To the best of my knowledge, and perhaps I am mistaken on this point as well, USB cable is preferable to Serial port cable due to superior capacity handling data and easier use...that is plug and play for USB as opposed to less handling capacity of Seriel cables, and having to screw and unscrew Seriel cables into the ports.

Is this all a misunderstanding on my part? If so, it is contrary to what several knowledgeable people have informe me of.

 

It is all a misunderstanding on your part. In my posts I have said nothing about EIA-232 (RS-232) serial ports, which are apparently what you are referencing. I said that Firewire (IEEE-1394) is preferable to USB.

Note that all three are technically serial ports.

 

Ahhh...okay, now the distiction is clear. Thank you for the clarification.

 

I'd like to carry that idea even further and see ham gear built with standardized expansion slots like computers have today. Need to add 2 meters? Plug a module into the slot. Narrower CW filter? Another slot.

I realize that we probably don't have a large enough customer base to make this happen, but we can dream, can't we?

 

I definetly agree with your idea maybe we should send this to some big manfactures like ICOM,or kenwood and go from there