Universal Serial Bus technology

With the recent release of Windows 98, the Universal Serial Bus (USB) has become a new buzzword in the computer industry. What's so great about USB? Well, the serial bus has been long neglected in the way of upgrades. We've seen faster video cards (2D and the introduction of 3D), faster and larger hard drives, much faster CPUs, new 3D sound card technology, and faster motherboards. It seems that almost every component in the system has been improved with the exception of the serial bus. Aside from the invention of PS/2 a few years ago, absolutely nothing has happened with the buses until USB came along.

The Universal Serial Bus has several benefits over the older serial bus. One is a greatly increased bandwidth. USB has a bandwidth of 12 megabytes per second, which is plenty of bandwidth for any peripheral. At most, an ADSL modem would probably take up to 6 Mb/s of bandwidth, and other small devices won't take up more than a megabyte with the exception of some USB speakers. In addition to the increased bandwidth, USB also supports up to 127 devices. I'm not exactly sure who would use 127 different devices, but it's always nice to have the upgrade possibilities. USB devices can be powered through the Universal Serial Bus as well. Not all USB devices are powered, but it is nice that the possibility is there.


Many new devices coming on to the market will use USB. Some of the devices may be a surprise, whereas USB isn't just limited to the standard fanfare of keyboards and mice. In the coming months you'll see more and more digital cameras (still and video), modems (ADSL, ISDN, and analog), monitors (CRT and LCD), keyboards, mice, speakers, joysticks, and telephones. In fact, some of these products are available today. One of the more interesting USB products is a USB speaker. But don't speakers need to be plugged into a sound card? This is not the case with USB speakers. They have a sound hardware inside and the audio signal is digitally transmitted across the USB bus. It may seem that the future of sound cards is doomed, but USB speakers will probably stay in the business sector at least for the time being because they can't offer the advanced 3D sound and MIDI features that sound cards can.


Of course no new technology is without its drawbacks and USB has a few of its own. One being that for full USB support you'll need Windows 95 OSR 2.1 with the USB patch, OSR 2.5, or Windows 98. A great feature of USB is that it supports up to 127 devices. However, only two USB ports are on the motherboard and in order to use more than two devices, additional USB hubs must be purchased, which can cost $80 or more. (Some USB devices offer pass-thru connectors, but many do not.)