TECHNICAL TIPS |
| Have you ever tried to put a square peg in a round hole? By DIANE McCARGAR Just when you think you've mastered all of the acronyms you can handle, the computer industry comes out with one more -- USB. Now before you throw in the towel and decide you don't need to know what USB stands for, ask yourself if you will be purchasing any peripherals such as printers in the near future. Our program recently had an experience where this issue did come up. We purchased a new iMac computer and had to address the lack of a floppy drive. I remembered we had some old external floppy drives, so we thought the problem was solved. That was until I tried to plug the old drive into the new computer.
Other than speed there are several advantages that come with
using USB connections. First, USB supports "plug-and-play". This
means that if you connect a new USB peripheral (a device with a USB cable) to
your computer, it should work right away. You don't need to follow any detailed
installation procedures. As with all peripherals, the computer does require
some software called a driver in order to know how to "talk' to the
peripheral, but Windows 98 and Mac OS 8.5 come with standard USB drivers. USB
also allows "hot plugging". This means you can plug in and unplug USB
peripherals while the computer is on. In the past you may have tried to connect
a mouse or a keyboard to a computer while it was running and it didn't work
until you turned the computer off and then back on again. Finally, USB
peripherals don't often require their own power supply because they get their
power through the USB connection itself. If most new computers like our iMac only come with 2 USB ports, what if you want to connect more than 2 USB peripherals to the computer. No problem! Up to 127 peripherals can be connected to one USB port using a USB hub. As the computer industry changes from older serial and parallel ports to USB ports there are bound to be some situations where people end up with the wrong cables, etc. So before you try to plug an older peripheral into a newer computer or vice versa ensure ahead of time that you won't end up trying to put a square peg in a round hole. If you do have this problem, don't despair. You can buy an adapter to change your square plug into a round one. |
The place where you connect an external device into
your computer is called a port. In the past, most PC computers came with a
monitor port, a keyboard port, serial ports for a mouse and modem and a
parallel port for a printer. Most PC computers sold after 1998 also have one or
two USB ports. Our new iMac computer came with two USB ports, and an Ethernet
port. The Ethernet port is for connecting to a network, so what are the USB
ports for? Everything else is the logical answer, hence the name Universal
Serial Bus (USB). USB ports are used to connect peripherals such as a keyboard,
mouse, joystick, digital camera, floppy drive, modem, scanner or printer to
your computer. USB ports are now beginning to replace serial and parallel ports
on new computers. Although USB connections are faster than standard serial and
parallel connections, they are still not sufficient for high speed peripherals
such as digital video cameras and fast hard drives.