I think Ethernet is even older.
this post was submitted on 29 Apr 2025
106 points (100.0% liked)
Hardware
432 readers
202 users here now
A community for news and discussion about the hardware side of technology.
Rules
1. English only
Title and associated content has to be in English.
2. Use original link
Post URL should be the original link to the article (even if paywalled) and archived copies left in the body. It allows avoiding duplicate posts when cross-posting.
3. Respectful communication
All communication has to be respectful of differing opinions, viewpoints, and experiences.
4. Inclusivity
Everyone is welcome here regardless of age, body size, visible or invisible disability, ethnicity, sex characteristics, gender identity and expression, education, socio-economic status, nationality, personal appearance, race, caste, color, religion, or sexual identity and orientation.
5. Ad hominem attacks
Any kind of personal attacks are expressly forbidden. If you can't argue your position without attacking a person's character, you already lost the argument.
6. Off-topic tangents
Stay on topic. Keep it relevant.
If someone is interested in moderating this community, message @brikox@lemmy.zip.
founded 9 months ago
MODERATORS
All PCs use electricity, wanna guess how old that is? /s
But seriously, I think there's several much older standards still in use on modern PCs, like ATX, the PCI bus, 8250/16550 UART, the x86 instruction set, BIOS etc.
I mean the 3.5mm audio jack was designed in the 50s...
And some asshole designers are trying to eliminate both of these >:0
S/PDIF-TOSLINK is from the early 80s. Ethernet just a bit newer, from the mid-80s.
And we probably don't want to start nitpicking about that antenna connector there.
Oh, and HDMI is from 2002, so about the same time.
Turns out that one USB-C is the only thing that isn't a full on ancient connector. I/O has good reasons to move slowly and stay backwards compatible.
Huh, i had no idea that toslink was from the early 80s, interesting!
I was in school when USB was released and remember the first reviews of a USB stick came out...
I'm using toslink to connect my 2022 TV to my 25+ year old stereo. Toslink is great.
Yeah, ironically the fancy optical connection/cable is outdated
Same!
When they started showing the standard, tech magazines covered it like they had just invented flying cars.
"So get this, your joystick and your mouse will go... in the same plug! Theoretically every single device could be plugged into the same hole with the same number of pins!"
My second favorite instance of breathless tech coverage, next to the guy who first tested an optical mouse and reported on its ability to work on different surfaces by very heavily implying the sentence "you could use this thing on your dick!"
I don't think people these days remember that mouse mats weren't some hardcore gamer optimization thing, ball mice wouldn't really work without one.
Sorry, old man tangent.
Oh, remember Lohitech's weird experment with rumble / force feedback mice?
I think it was the Logitech iForceMan or iFeel or something...
The idea was that you would feel when the cursor was over a button or link, weird...
I do not, but that sounds like something Apple is due to invent for the first time any day.
I did have a mouse that had a touch surface instead of a mouse wheel but still felt exactly like a mousehweel using haptics. It was creepy, cool and kinda worked. That was Microsoft, though.
At least they no longer put PS/2 ports in there. But it was not too long ago
~~8mm~~ 3.5mm audio jack: “Am I a joke to you?”
8mm? That's larger than a guitar plug. What kind of PC do you have?
Almost every smartphone usb port is 2.0 as well. USB C is just a connector folks.
Maybe a few years ago but they're pretty much all USB 3 now.
I thought USB c ports were generally 3.0?
Usb C has pins for both 3.x/4 and separate ones for usb 2.0. Many devices just hook up the 2.0 lines and call it a day, because parts that can actually handle 3.0+ are rare and expensive.
Companies making USB capable parts typically contract out or buy the section of their chip which handles USB or other things like ethernet (Intellectual property cores or IP core) already designed as a drop in part of the semiconductor.. This usually is under some form of contract / nda + they pay a big fee, so the parts are expensive and documentation can be tough to acquire without yourself signing NDA and being a company looking to use their ICs.
USB 2.0 is much simpler and cheaper to deal with and cant handle as much bandwidth, but thats typically acceptable for simple electronics.
So the USB connector and the USB protocol are different, and not necessarily related to each other - however there is a functional upper limit to the throughput that a given connector type can support (you'll never get USB 3.0 data transfer through a USB Mini connector).
A type C connector might only be wired to USB 2.0-level hardware on the back - but this is not really a bad thing. There are lots of low-level electronic devices that need a USB connector that don't really need 3.0 data transfer, and faster data processing chips are more expensive, but it's convenient to only need one type of cable for everything.
There are some nice reference tables in the Wikipedia article: USB Hardware
on a pc, yes, they are generally are some sort of usb 3 (like 3.2 gen 1 or gen 2).
as a connector, though, usb type-c is used for more than just usb.
I thought you meant the fucking I/O shield at first and was getting unreasonably mad at how old they are and how hard they still are to install
But no, it's about USB, happy birthday you glorious bastard, life on 1.0 sucked compared to you