[Elecraft] USB to serial angst

[Eric Manning]

The conservative spirit is alive and well. USB seen as a dangerous and 
radical innovation, forsooth.

On 3/13/2010 5:10 PM, Joe Subich, W4TV wrote:
>
> That is completely uninformed and demonstrates a dangerous lack
> of knowledge about the way USB operates.
>    
Aw, shucks.
> Placing a USB port in the K3 would simply move the USB UART
> currently found in the USB to serial converter onto the KIO3
> board.
Correct, and would thus avoid the un-necessary and superfluous packaging 
and connector costs of the USB/RS232 dongle.
>   If Elecraft were to use the prolific chipset currently
> in the KUSB,
If my mother were a bus , I would have wheels.
> they would also be stuck with the Prolific drivers
> that are notoriously problematic with VB 6 software and would
> render the K3 unusable with several popular software packages.
>
> USB *** HAS NO ADVANTAGE *** over standard RS-232 ports and it
> *** NEVER WILL ***.
Well, how about
1. speed
2. flexibillity
3. fanout
4. less prone to abuse of the control lines , violations of the standard 
, e.g. using them to send Morse, for shame.
Other than that, and vendor support as it is current practice  not an 
archaic legacy artifact, I can't think of any.
>   Going to USB requires a substantial added
> investment by the manufacturer and a major ongoing support
> cost.
>    
True, depending on what you mean by substantial and major.
But avoids us customers being forced to  buy thousands of those stupid 
and crash-prone dongles.
Being a customer not a vendor, I'm for that tradeoff.
> In addition to the software support cost, USB is a multiplexed
> (shared)
correct

system level bus.


with respect, it is a low-speed peripheral level bus.



>    Because of the system architecture
> data rates on the bus are
[ may be, depending on the application]
>   much higher than the serial equivalent
> through put.  That makes USB much more susceptible to both
> radiated and conducted noise problems.  Computer motherboards
> (and laptop/netbooks) that fail to properly ground the USB
> shield to the board's ground plane are almost guaranteed to
> become wideband noise generators (something that is very rare
> with the 8250 compatible UART).
>    

Very true, but with respect, off topic. The assertion ignores   the 
awkward fact that all computers built in this century have USB, and not 
the ancient RS 232...
We are stuck with that fact.
And, the conversation was  about USB on the K3, not on the computer...
> 73,
>
>     ... Joe, W4TV
>
>
>    
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: elecraft-bounces at mailman.qth.net
>> [mailto:elecraft-bounces at mailman.qth.net] On Behalf Of eric manning
>> Sent: Saturday, March 13, 2010 2:08 PM
>> To: elecraft at mailman.qth.net
>> Subject: Re: [Elecraft] USB to serial angst
>>
>>
>> All in favour of a USB port on the K3?
>>
>> Then we could forget about un-necessary, expensive , flaky  and
>> crash-prone USB to serial adapters.
>> THe serial port  with its RS-232 interface is obsolete. It
>> dates back to
>> the 70's if not earlier and was superseded  by USB.
>>
>> eric
>>
>> VA7DZ
>>
>> S/N 3640
>>
>> -- 
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>
>    


-- 
Eric G Manning,P.Eng., FIEEE, FEIC
Prof Emeritus of CS&  ECE
Univ of Victoria


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