Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from iHeartRadio. Hey there,
Speaker 1: and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland.
Speaker 1: I'm an executive producer with iHeartRadio and how the tech
Speaker 1: are you? It is time for a tech stuff classics episode.
Speaker 1: In this episode originally published on April twenty first, twenty seventeen,
Speaker 1: it is titled how USB ports Work? And Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: once upon a time, the USB was a novelty. It
Speaker 1: was a new feature on hardware like laptops and such,
Speaker 1: and it caused a bit of confusion when it first
Speaker 1: came out. People weren't used to it. They were used
Speaker 1: to things like proprietary ports. So we're gonna listen to
Speaker 1: this classics episode about USB ports. I hope you enjoy.
Speaker 1: We'll find these ports on computers, smartphones, digital cameras, scanners, printers,
Speaker 1: and tons of other electronic devices. So what are they,
Speaker 1: who invented them? And how do they work? You know,
Speaker 1: your standard tech stuff type episode. Well, you could just
Speaker 1: go and read the specification for USB if you really
Speaker 1: wanted to, and that would give you all the information
Speaker 1: you need and more. For example, the specification for USB
Speaker 1: two point zero is a mere six hundred and fifty
Speaker 1: pages long seems a bit excessive to me, so let's
Speaker 1: break down the topic tech stuff style. So first, let's
Speaker 1: talk about what a bus is. In computer terms, a
Speaker 1: bus is essentially a conduit for data. Think of it
Speaker 1: like a hallway that data can pass through. It's a
Speaker 1: communication pathway that lets different components within a computer or
Speaker 1: two different devices send data back and forth between each other.
Speaker 1: That means some buses are internal and facilitate communication within
Speaker 1: a single device. Other buses are external and allow for
Speaker 1: the communication of different components like a smartphone to a
Speaker 1: computer for example. So inside a computer, you would have
Speaker 1: a bus connecting components like the microprocessor and a memory
Speaker 1: storage device like a hard drive. So the computer's operating
Speaker 1: memory and CPU tend to be very closely tied together,
Speaker 1: as in its operating memory like the random access memory.
Speaker 1: That and the CPU are usually real tight. But they
Speaker 1: still have a bus, and it's usually called the system
Speaker 1: bus that connects the two. And just as microprocessors and
Speaker 1: memory have improved over time, so if buses, they've improved
Speaker 1: to allow more data to pass through at a single time. Now,
Speaker 1: keep in mind information is traveling at pretty much the
Speaker 1: same speed, you know, more or less the speed of light.
Speaker 1: It's not quite the same, but for the purposes of
Speaker 1: our argument, it works just fine. So really the question
Speaker 1: is how much data can you move through the bus simultaneously?
Speaker 1: Or if we wanted to use a metaphor, imagine that
Speaker 1: you have an eye dropper and your friend has a bucket,
Speaker 1: and you're each taking water from one puddle and walking
Speaker 1: across a field at the same speed and depositing that
Speaker 1: water into a little dip in the other end of
Speaker 1: the field that's going to become the new puddle. So
Speaker 1: you're just relocating water from one puddle to the other.
Speaker 1: Now you're walking at the same speed, so it's not
Speaker 1: that your friend is going faster than you are, but
Speaker 1: they can carry more water per trip, so they're delivering
Speaker 1: more water every time they make this trip, and even
Speaker 1: though you're both going the same speed. This is why
Speaker 1: I get a little antsy about data speeds, because it's
Speaker 1: not really so much about speed. It's more about the
Speaker 1: amount of data you can carry at a time. That's
Speaker 1: kind of what I'm getting at. So if you hear
Speaker 1: like this computer sends data faster than that computer, the
Speaker 1: information is still traveling at more or less the same
Speaker 1: speed depending upon what medium they're using. But it all
Speaker 1: is down to how much information can pass through at
Speaker 1: any given time. Now, there are also buses that allow
Speaker 1: data transfers with sources that are external to the computer. Again,
Speaker 1: the smartphone is a great example, or a digital camera,
Speaker 1: anything like that. The buses facilitate the data transfer, which
Speaker 1: typically happens over a cable, and there are plenty ways
Speaker 1: to transmit data wirelessly, but we're just going to concentrate
Speaker 1: on cables and tethered peripherals today because that's what USB
Speaker 1: works with, right, That's the protocol is that you're using
Speaker 1: physical connections. In other episodes, i'll talk about stuff like
Speaker 1: Wi Fi or Bluetooth or other methods of transferring data around. Now,
Speaker 1: before USB ports became a standard way to connect various
Speaker 1: components to a computer, we had to rely on other
Speaker 1: types of ports, like parallel and serial ports. Serial parts
Speaker 1: are se r L ports, not not serial like Captain crunch.
Speaker 1: They're basic computer connections. They send bytes of data one
Speaker 1: bit at a time. So, in case you don't remember
Speaker 1: basic computer lingo, a byte is eight bits and a
Speaker 1: bit is a single unit of information in computer speech,
Speaker 1: it's either a zero or a one, which is kind
Speaker 1: of like an off on switch. So a byte is
Speaker 1: eight of these collected together. Serial ports send information one
Speaker 1: bit at a time one zero or one to one,
Speaker 1: and then does a whole sequence of those Serial parts
Speaker 1: had either nine or twenty five pins. The nine pin
Speaker 1: connector was a standard for modems. We're talking about the
Speaker 1: old dial up modems that would connect to your phone
Speaker 1: line and allow your computer to communicate with the outside world.
Speaker 1: If you don't know what a dial up modem is,
Speaker 1: you know, ask your parents. Each pen was designed to
Speaker 1: allow for communication between the computer and the modem in
Speaker 1: some way. The twenty five pen connector was meant to
Speaker 1: become a new standard, but was so much larger than
Speaker 1: the nine pen connectors that it was a bit hamstrung
Speaker 1: from the start. Not everyone adopted it. In fact, a
Speaker 1: lot of manufacturers just stuck with nine pen peripherals rather
Speaker 1: than adopt the twenty five pen standard. Serial ports had
Speaker 1: a range of data transmission speeds from one hundred and
Speaker 1: fifteen to more than four hundred and fifty kilobits per second,
Speaker 1: so four hundred and fifty thousand bits per second was
Speaker 1: around the upper range of that. Now, some serial ports
Speaker 1: wouldn't allow for simultaneous operation, which meant that if the
Speaker 1: computer was sending out data through one serial port, it
Speaker 1: could not send out data to other serial ports at
Speaker 1: the same time. It's somewhat problematic if you're trying to
Speaker 1: do a whole lot of stuff connected to one machine.
Speaker 1: Parallel ports were often for stuff like CD burners, printers, scanners,
Speaker 1: and external hard drives where you wanted to have a
Speaker 1: faster data transfer because otherwise you're going to be sitting
Speaker 1: around for a really long time. So it's not that
Speaker 1: serial ports are necessarily bad for stuff. There are plenty
Speaker 1: of operations where you only need a little bit of
Speaker 1: data going between a device and a computer. It doesn't
Speaker 1: have to be super quote unquote fast because it's just
Speaker 1: not data hungry. But other things, like if you want
Speaker 1: a hard drive, you want something that's going to move
Speaker 1: data and larger amounts in that amount of time, because
Speaker 1: otherwise you're going to wait forever every time you try
Speaker 1: to save a large file to that hard drive or
Speaker 1: to retrieve a large file from that hard drive. Now,
Speaker 1: IBM developed parallel ports specifically to create an interface between
Speaker 1: a computer and a printer When IBM was first building
Speaker 1: personal computers, it partnered with a company called Centronics, and
Speaker 1: Centronics made computers. Centronics had a thirty six pin connector,
Speaker 1: meaning that the cable ended in a plug, and that
Speaker 1: plug had thirty six pins arranged in a row that
Speaker 1: would then plug into a port that had thirty six
Speaker 1: holes for those pins. IBM decided to couple this thirty
Speaker 1: six pin with a second line of pins twenty five
Speaker 1: in total. So together these two rows of pins were
Speaker 1: used as the standard for IBM computers, and when other
Speaker 1: companies began to create clones of the IBM PC, they
Speaker 1: also created those types of ports. I've got to do
Speaker 1: a full episode about IBM clones at some point. I
Speaker 1: talked about them briefly in a couple of other episodes,
Speaker 1: but really it's a fascinating thing to hear the story
Speaker 1: about how other companies were able to take advantage of
Speaker 1: IBM's design. Now it's called a parallel port because data
Speaker 1: would flow parallel to each other. Data traveled one byte
Speaker 1: at a time, not a bit, but a byte a
Speaker 1: collection of eight bits, which made parallel ports much faster
Speaker 1: than serial ports or mora acculately, it could send more
Speaker 1: data in the same amount of time. Parallel ports could
Speaker 1: transfer at about one hundred kilobytes per second. But Jonathan,
Speaker 1: I hear you say. You mentioned that serial ports have
Speaker 1: a range of one hundred and fifteen to four hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty kilobits per second. Yeah, I did say that.
Speaker 1: But parallel ports are sending bytes, not bits, and that
Speaker 1: bite is that collection of eight bits. So one hundred
Speaker 1: kilobytes is the same as approximately eight hundred kilobits. The
Speaker 1: parallel ports could send more data, though with some peripherals,
Speaker 1: this amount of data is really unnecessary, which is why
Speaker 1: serial ports didn't just disappear. They were still useful for
Speaker 1: certain applications, and they were cheap. So now let's talk
Speaker 1: about some of the pins in the parallel ports. We
Speaker 1: mentioned them in the serial ones. Well, if you were
Speaker 1: to look at them and number them across the row
Speaker 1: on both the twenty five pen and the sixty thirty
Speaker 1: six pin connectors, rather twenty five and thirty six pin connectors,
Speaker 1: Pens two through nine on those connectors carried those eight bits.
Speaker 1: Pen one carried a voltage between two point eight and
Speaker 1: five volts. The computer would drop the voltage to point
Speaker 1: five volts whenever it was sending data to a printer
Speaker 1: or other device, so that was kind of like an
Speaker 1: alert to a printer to be on the lookout for data.
Speaker 1: If it detected a voltage drop, it knew that information
Speaker 1: was incoming, so it's kind of a heads up. Pen
Speaker 1: ten was reserved for an acknowledge signal, this time sent
Speaker 1: from the printer to the computer. So this was essentially
Speaker 1: gotcha bro. So computer says heads up, printer says gotcha bro,
Speaker 1: and that lets the computer knows that the message had
Speaker 1: been received. Other pins were used to let the computer
Speaker 1: know if the printer was busy, or if it was
Speaker 1: out of paper or ink or something along those lines,
Speaker 1: or they were ground connectors as in electrical ground connectors.
Speaker 1: Future improvements in parallel processors allowed for bi directional communication,
Speaker 1: meaning that the printer and computer could talk to each other,
Speaker 1: not just one way communication. But the original standard only
Speaker 1: allowed data to flow one way at any given time,
Speaker 1: So ultimately you would get to parallel ports that could
Speaker 1: have simultaneous bidirectional communication, but that wasn't how it started. Now.
Speaker 1: As we created new peripherals for computers, we also created
Speaker 1: new ports. You'd use expansion cards for your computer, and
Speaker 1: those would plug into the main circuit board the motherboard
Speaker 1: on a computer to create the connection. So if you've
Speaker 1: never built a machine or ever had to customize one,
Speaker 1: this might sound a little weird, but here's what it meant.
Speaker 1: It meant you'd open up a computer case, you'd pop out.
Speaker 1: Typically there'd be a metal plate on the back side
Speaker 1: of a computer case that would cover up what would
Speaker 1: otherwise be just a kind of an oblong hole. You
Speaker 1: would end up taking the plate off of that so
Speaker 1: that the hole was open. You would insert a card
Speaker 1: into a slot on that main circuit board. It would
Speaker 1: seat the card properly, so you'd make sure that it
Speaker 1: was plugged in nice and snug, and you would make
Speaker 1: sure that you were using the card slot so that
Speaker 1: the back of the card is lined up with that
Speaker 1: new hole that you've uncovered on the back of your case.
Speaker 1: This would allow you to plug in devices externally from
Speaker 1: the computer. It would just plug in through that hole
Speaker 1: where the port would be. So the hole is the
Speaker 1: reason why the plate is there, is to keep the
Speaker 1: computer safe from stuff like dust. You know, you don't
Speaker 1: want to just have a bunch of open areas to
Speaker 1: your computer or else it can get dusty, which can
Speaker 1: then mess up the internal mechanisms. Not really even mechanisms.
Speaker 1: It can just make things overheat and break down and
Speaker 1: short out a computer if it's really really bad. That's
Speaker 1: why we have computer fans and stuff like that. It's
Speaker 1: not just to manage the heat, it's also to manage
Speaker 1: the dust. So you take that plate off, you reveal
Speaker 1: the spot, you've seated the card, you put it all
Speaker 1: back together, and then you would plug your new peripheral
Speaker 1: into your new port and you would turn on the
Speaker 1: computer and find out if it worked or not, and
Speaker 1: if it didn't work, you had to start troubleshooting. Typically,
Speaker 1: it would also mean you'd have to turn the computer
Speaker 1: off again, because the way a lot of these old
Speaker 1: systems work, they weren't plug and play. You couldn't hot
Speaker 1: plug a device into computers for a lot of these ports.
Speaker 1: That means that you had to actually turned the computer off,
Speaker 1: plug the device in, turn the computer on, and then
Speaker 1: it would start to pull information or send information to
Speaker 1: that device, kind of a primitive way of doing it.
Speaker 1: And on top of that, some of the devices had
Speaker 1: proprietary plugs and ports. For example, in nineteen eighty seven,
Speaker 1: IBM introduced the EPs slides two port for keyboards and
Speaker 1: mouses mices miss you know what I mean. The port
Speaker 1: is circular with six pins arranged in pairs around kind
Speaker 1: of a rectangular center, and it communicated through a serial protocol,
Speaker 1: but it had a totally different shape from your typical
Speaker 1: serial plugs and ports keyboards were similar. And then there's
Speaker 1: the idea that about plugging stuff while your computer is on. Yeah,
Speaker 1: not a thing at those times. A hot port would
Speaker 1: allow you to plug a device in whether a computer
Speaker 1: is on or off, and then the PC recognizes that
Speaker 1: there's a connection and it allows you to use whatever
Speaker 1: that device is. These old ports, for the most part,
Speaker 1: did not allow for that unless you had the computer
Speaker 1: turn on and go through its boot program and then
Speaker 1: detect all of these peripherals. It just didn't recognize that
Speaker 1: anything new was attached to it. So why don't we
Speaker 1: still depend upon these and other specialized ports. Well, some
Speaker 1: computers still have special serial or parallel ports, but most
Speaker 1: of them now have some type of USB port or
Speaker 1: HDMI port for some displays. And part of the problem
Speaker 1: is that over the years, the number of peripherals for
Speaker 1: computer systems grew substantially, but you can only fit so
Speaker 1: many ports on a computer. There's only so much physical
Speaker 1: space you can use, and each port required its own
Speaker 1: card plugged into a computer's motherboard, so there are only
Speaker 1: so many slots on a motherboard you could use. Up
Speaker 1: on top of that, you need to designate special numbers
Speaker 1: for each card plugging into the motherboard, and that included
Speaker 1: an interrupt request also known as an IRQ and an
Speaker 1: input output address or the IO address. Now, those numbers
Speaker 1: are hard coded onto cards, so it doesn't mean that
Speaker 1: you have to come up with a number, it's on
Speaker 1: the card itself. But that also meant that you could
Speaker 1: potentially encounter conflicts between different cards for different products. Let's
Speaker 1: say that you've got a video card from one company
Speaker 1: and a totally different peripheral card. Let's say it's for
Speaker 1: a specific type of scanner from another company, and just
Speaker 1: by coincidence, they have conflicts in either the IRAQ or
Speaker 1: the IO address. This could cause issues, and that would
Speaker 1: sometimes mean that peripherals would become incompatible with one another
Speaker 1: and that there'd be no way to run both off
Speaker 1: the same machine. So you might find that you can
Speaker 1: have either a display or a scanner attached to this computer,
Speaker 1: but not both not ideal, and then you had all
Speaker 1: the different kinds of plugs making it confusing to consumers.
Speaker 1: You can't just plug any peripheral into any port. That's
Speaker 1: why older computers frequently have color coded ports and helps
Speaker 1: the user know which one is for a keyboard versus
Speaker 1: a mouse, that kind of thing. So what would be
Speaker 1: the solution to this, Well, that would be the Universal
Speaker 1: Serial Bus And I'm going to go into more details
Speaker 1: about exactly how it pulled it off in just a second,
Speaker 1: but first let's take a quick break to thank our sponsor.
Speaker 1: So a much more attractive alternative to these serial and
Speaker 1: parallel ports is plug and play, which is that concept
Speaker 1: in which you can just plug a device in using
Speaker 1: a standardized connector on a standardized port and it just works.
Speaker 1: And USB can do that. It can also dramatically increase
Speaker 1: the number of peripherles you can attach to a single
Speaker 1: home device, whether it's a hub or a computer or whatever.
Speaker 1: The USB standard allows up to one hundred and twenty
Speaker 1: seven devices to connect to a single source. That would
Speaker 1: mean you need a few USB hubs to max it out,
Speaker 1: so you might have one thing plugged into a USB
Speaker 1: port that actually has five other USB ports in that
Speaker 1: Then you could expand that it's kind of like plugging
Speaker 1: like a bunch of power strips into each other in
Speaker 1: order to maximize the number of power cords that you
Speaker 1: can attach to one outlet, only slightly less dangerous. There's
Speaker 1: not really a huge risk for fire in the case
Speaker 1: of the one hundred and twenty seven devices attached to
Speaker 1: a single home computer. The important thing to remember really
Speaker 1: is that it opens up possibilities for far more connections
Speaker 1: than parallel or serial ports, which are one customer at
Speaker 1: a time kind of ports. And plugging a peripheral into
Speaker 1: a host computer is supposed to be easy with USB,
Speaker 1: assuming that you have it facing the right way. More
Speaker 1: on that in a second. The computer is in charge
Speaker 1: of communications, so it detects the type of device that
Speaker 1: gets plugged into any given USB board, and then the
Speaker 1: computer is supposed to load a compatible driver for whatever
Speaker 1: that peripheral is. And this is what allows a periphole
Speaker 1: device like a keyboard or a printer or a digital
Speaker 1: camera to communicate with the computer in a nice smooth way.
Speaker 1: Computers downstream data to devices which upstream data to computers
Speaker 1: and it's all very civilized, I assure you. There's another
Speaker 1: really important point. The USB protocol allows for powered connections.
Speaker 1: That means the ports and cables can carry electricity to
Speaker 1: power devices as well as a voltage to indicate data transfer,
Speaker 1: and that was really important. It allowed for options that
Speaker 1: simplified cable management. If a peripheral could transmit data and
Speaker 1: receive power through one cable, it could cut down on
Speaker 1: some clutter. So this is why you can find lots
Speaker 1: of little plug in toys and do dads that will
Speaker 1: attached via a USB cable. So it might be a
Speaker 1: little desk lamp or a little desktop missile launcher. I've
Speaker 1: seen those on Think Geek. I really need to get
Speaker 1: some of those. Hey, if anyone's over at think Geek
Speaker 1: and you got a few extra little USB missile launchers,
Speaker 1: send them to how stuff works. I think the office
Speaker 1: could really step up its intercompany warfare anyway. Now, we
Speaker 1: tend to use USB to refer to specific physical things
Speaker 1: like the ports or the cables, but you have to
Speaker 1: remember USB is an underlying technology protocol. The physical things
Speaker 1: we have are specific implementations of that technology, and they
Speaker 1: are dependent upon various versions of the USB Standard. But
Speaker 1: the standard is the real heart of USB. It's not
Speaker 1: a cable, it's not a device, it's not even a computer.
Speaker 1: It's the protocol that defines the behavior of USB. Now,
Speaker 1: right now, as I'm recording this episode, the most recent
Speaker 1: version of the USB standard is version three point one,
Speaker 1: and I'll talk more about what that means in just
Speaker 1: a moment. Before we can really look at where we
Speaker 1: stand right now, we should probably take a look at
Speaker 1: where it all got started. And you know me, you
Speaker 1: know I love my tech history. So how did the
Speaker 1: USB protocols into being? Wells Zeus on Mount Olympus once
Speaker 1: stubbed his toe and from that toe. I wish that
Speaker 1: were the case, because that would be a cool story.
Speaker 1: I love Greek mythology. But back in nineteen ninety four,
Speaker 1: an Intel developer named a jay Bot began working on
Speaker 1: a solution to this peripheral problem. And at the same time,
Speaker 1: there was a group called the USB Implementer's Forum Incorporated
Speaker 1: or USBIF that came into being, and that group included
Speaker 1: people from Intel, Compac, Apple, Hewitt, Packard, and Microsoft, among others.
Speaker 1: This confederation of companies was necessary in order to develop
Speaker 1: a standard protocol that would work across a vast array
Speaker 1: of computers and devices. So they wanted to make sure
Speaker 1: that if anyone incorporated this into their designs, it was
Speaker 1: incorporated across the board. Otherwise it would be limited in
Speaker 1: its usefulness. It certainly wouldn't become a universal serial bus.
Speaker 1: And they also really wanted to simplify ports. They wanted
Speaker 1: to reduce the half dozen standards with a single replacement,
Speaker 1: and ideally it wouldn't matter what you plugged into your
Speaker 1: computer or which port you used. It would just work.
Speaker 1: Whether you plugged it in the front the back didn't matter.
Speaker 1: The computer would automatically recognize it. That's what they wanted,
Speaker 1: so they had to create something to make it happen.
Speaker 1: In late nineteen ninety five, they did have something to
Speaker 1: show off. They had worked for a full year and
Speaker 1: they had developed the standard that was called USB one
Speaker 1: point zero. The protocol only gave a hint at what
Speaker 1: was to come. It could transmit data at twelve megabits
Speaker 1: per second, which was much faster than parallel or serial ports,
Speaker 1: though sluggish compared to today's technology. The revised USB one
Speaker 1: point one standard added in another capability of transferring data,
Speaker 1: but this time at one point five megabits per second,
Speaker 1: So why would you lower that quote unquote speed or
Speaker 1: the capacity if you prefer Well, the reason was that
Speaker 1: some devices just couldn't handle a bandwidth of twelve megabits
Speaker 1: per second. They didn't need it. They couldn't handle that much.
Speaker 1: So you needed to have a throttling mechanism in order
Speaker 1: to send data at the proper rate to those peripherals.
Speaker 1: And that was the solution of USB one point one,
Speaker 1: and one point one got the most US. In those
Speaker 1: early days, not a whole lot of devices used USB
Speaker 1: one point zero. Almost everyone was using one point one
Speaker 1: from as soon as it was available. It just made
Speaker 1: more sense. The first computer to eschew all other ports
Speaker 1: in favor of the new USB standard was the iMac
Speaker 1: G three in nineteen ninety eight. So Apple led the way.
Speaker 1: It probably comes as a surprise to absolutely no one
Speaker 1: out there in the audience, because Apple is known for
Speaker 1: dumping legacy systems in favor of new technology, at least
Speaker 1: with their computers, if not their mobile devices. Sometimes they
Speaker 1: hold back with mobile devices, but they charge ahead with
Speaker 1: their computers. So with USB devices, it wasn't such a
Speaker 1: big deal. Since we're talking about a universal standard. In
Speaker 1: other cases, Apple has sometimes gone a more proprietary approach,
Speaker 1: which gets a bit more frustrating because that means you
Speaker 1: invest in a closed off ecosystem and you can't really
Speaker 1: use your equipment with anyone else's stuff. In other words,
Speaker 1: if it's a USB cord, you can use that on
Speaker 1: an Apple product or a PC where all sorts of
Speaker 1: other devices that have USB ports and it doesn't matter.
Speaker 1: But if Apple goes a proprietary route and the only
Speaker 1: people making devices and cables are doing it for Apple,
Speaker 1: then it doesn't do you any good to have that
Speaker 1: stuff and then encounter a PC. You can't just use
Speaker 1: that same stuff because the plugs won't fit, the protocols
Speaker 1: aren't the same, they're not supported by this other piece
Speaker 1: of equipment. The universal standard gets around that kind of problem.
Speaker 1: In two thousand, the USB two point zho standard debuted,
Speaker 1: and it blew USB one point one out of the water. Now,
Speaker 1: transfer rates had jumped up to four hundred and eighty
Speaker 1: megabits per second, which was forty times faster, or rather
Speaker 1: forty times greater capacity than the previous version. In two
Speaker 1: thousand and one, USB two point zero became an official standard.
Speaker 1: In order to ensure backwards compatibility, the USB two point
Speaker 1: zho standard could also operate at transfer speeds of twelve
Speaker 1: megabits per second and one point five megabits per second. Now,
Speaker 1: that was done to avoid the problem of updating a
Speaker 1: protocol and making a ton of tech obsolete. At the
Speaker 1: same time, it also meant that you could plug a
Speaker 1: USB one point one device into a USB two point
Speaker 1: zero port, or even use a USB two point zero
Speaker 1: cable with a USB one point one port. The only
Speaker 1: real problem is that if you had a USB two
Speaker 1: point zero device and you plugged it into a USB
Speaker 1: one point one port, you might not be able to
Speaker 1: use the USB two point zero device because it would
Speaker 1: receive a smaller amount of data over time, So if
Speaker 1: it needed that faster transfer rate, then the device wouldn't
Speaker 1: really work well with the USB one point one port.
Speaker 1: Otherwise it was pretty much backwards compatible. Also, obviously, if
Speaker 1: you really wanted to get the most out of everything,
Speaker 1: you needed to go two point zero across the board.
Speaker 1: You had to have a two point zero port, you
Speaker 1: had to have a cable that was two point zero compatible,
Speaker 1: and you had to have a two point zero device
Speaker 1: all working together otherwise, you are moving as fast as
Speaker 1: the slowest member of the team. Right, It's like a
Speaker 1: relay race team. If one person is slow, that affects
Speaker 1: the whole team. Same thing with these components. If one
Speaker 1: component was USB one point one, twelve megabits per second
Speaker 1: was as fast as the data could travel, you could
Speaker 1: not get to that four hundred and eighty speed. USB
Speaker 1: two point zero also added a feature called USB on
Speaker 1: the Go that allowed two USB devices to interface through
Speaker 1: USB without the need for a third component to act
Speaker 1: as host. In other words, you could connect two USB
Speaker 1: two point zero devices directly with each other using the
Speaker 1: appropriate cable, without having a computer as the go between.
Speaker 1: So if I had maybe a camera and a phone,
Speaker 1: I might want to transfer pictures I've taken with my
Speaker 1: camera onto my phone for some reason. Maybe I want
Speaker 1: to share them, Maybe I'm just using my phone as
Speaker 1: sort of an external hard drive. With this USB on
Speaker 1: the go feature, you could do that without having to
Speaker 1: plug both devices into a computer. First, the earlier version
Speaker 1: of USB, the computer was kind of master control. Everything
Speaker 1: had to go through it, so this was a big innovation.
Speaker 1: Around this time we also saw the first USB flash drives,
Speaker 1: which are sometimes known as thumb drives or pen drives.
Speaker 1: These are those little storage devices that you plug into
Speaker 1: a USB port and they feature rewriteable flash based memory.
Speaker 1: I got a ton of these from various trips to
Speaker 1: tech trade shows, and I love them because I could
Speaker 1: pull the data from that flash drive onto my computer.
Speaker 1: I could then wipe the flash drive and then use
Speaker 1: them for all sorts of stuff like documents, pictures, that
Speaker 1: kind of thing. So a lot of my backups are
Speaker 1: on flash drives. The original flash drives could hold a
Speaker 1: whopping eight megabytes of data, and that's me kind of
Speaker 1: being a little coy about how primitive our past was,
Speaker 1: because today you can find flash drives that hold on
Speaker 1: to hundreds of gigabytes of data, which still sounds kind
Speaker 1: of crazy to me. There's part of my brain that
Speaker 1: refuses to acknowledge that you could fit two hundred gigabytes
Speaker 1: of data onto something like a thumb drive. Now, with
Speaker 1: USB three point zero, you get another boost in that
Speaker 1: capacity that data transfer rate, this time hitting four point
Speaker 1: eight gigabits per second four point eight billion bits per second.
Speaker 1: It's also backwards compatible with USB two point zero devices
Speaker 1: and ports, though again, if you have a USB three
Speaker 1: point zero device and you connect it to a computer
Speaker 1: through a USB two point zero port, you're not going
Speaker 1: to get the full benefit of the technology. You can't
Speaker 1: get that four point eight gigabit per second transfer rate. Technically,
Speaker 1: you probably never would hit that rate anyway. That's sort
Speaker 1: of the top end of what the data transfer rates are.
Speaker 1: Usually real world examples are slightly lower than that, but
Speaker 1: you get what I mean. The USB three point zero
Speaker 1: standard also allows for simultaneous uploading and downloading on separate wires,
Speaker 1: two for transmission, two for receiving data. So this sped
Speaker 1: things up because you didn't have to wait for a
Speaker 1: communication to go one route and then for it to
Speaker 1: come back the other way. You had dedicated wires just
Speaker 1: for the uploading or downloading of information. It's kind of
Speaker 1: like having separate lanes on a highway. By doing that,
Speaker 1: you allow for much faster transfers. And I'll talk more
Speaker 1: about the wires that you can find in USB cables
Speaker 1: in a little bit. One of the things that the
Speaker 1: USB three point zero protocols allow for is the connection
Speaker 1: of data hungry peripherals, stuff that needs lots and lots
Speaker 1: of information in a very short amount of time. So
Speaker 1: an example that is a high resolution display, because they
Speaker 1: are constantly refreshing and redrawing the screen so that you
Speaker 1: can see new stuff. Otherwise it would just be a
Speaker 1: series of static pictures very slowly regenerating. You've got to
Speaker 1: have that super fast data transfer rate otherwise you can't
Speaker 1: get high definition displays otherwise. So this was a way
Speaker 1: of creating a plug and play approach to stuff even
Speaker 1: as sophisticated as a high resolution display. And it also
Speaker 1: allows for high speed data transfers to storage drives. So
Speaker 1: if you've ever had to move a large file from
Speaker 1: an internal drive to an external drive, you know it
Speaker 1: can take a long time. Like let's say that you've
Speaker 1: got an internal drive that's a couple of gigabytes in size,
Speaker 1: and you have an external data drive and you think,
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna move everything over to there so i
Speaker 1: can free up space in my computer. If you've ever
Speaker 1: done that with a USB two point zero connection, you
Speaker 1: know it can take a long time. So this dramatically
Speaker 1: reduced the amount of time it takes to move large
Speaker 1: amounts of information around. The USB three point zero protocol
Speaker 1: helps alleviate that bottleneck that tends to occur at the
Speaker 1: bus level, though, you're still dependent upon other factors like
Speaker 1: your computer's processor and the hard drives writing capabilities. Again,
Speaker 1: it really comes down to what is the slowest element
Speaker 1: of the collection of technology. Whatever the slowest element is,
Speaker 1: that's your limiting factor. So really USB improvements are to
Speaker 1: make sure that the bus stays keeps up to speed
Speaker 1: with things like microprocessors and hard drives, that sort of thing. Now.
Speaker 1: USB three point one I mentioned earlier is the most
Speaker 1: recent version as of the recording of this podcast. It
Speaker 1: upped the max data transfer rate again, this time up
Speaker 1: to ten gigabits per second. At least that's the theoretical
Speaker 1: top and it debuted in July twenty thirteen. Now, in
Speaker 1: August twenty fourteen, the usb IF published the specification for
Speaker 1: USB Type C connector systems. That's the reversible USBC plug.
Speaker 1: You can find some smartphones and high end laptops and
Speaker 1: other devices right now. It's a little different from the
Speaker 1: previous USB connectors. Also, people tend to conflate the two.
Speaker 1: They tend to think of USBC and USB three point
Speaker 1: one being the same thing. They are not. I mentioned
Speaker 1: earlier that the USB really refers to a protocol, not
Speaker 1: a specific technology. Same thing with USB three point one
Speaker 1: is a technology protocol, a set of standards rules, if
Speaker 1: you WILLBC is a physical technology that follows those rules
Speaker 1: and is a cable and port system. It's not in
Speaker 1: itself three point one. All right, Let's take another quick
Speaker 1: break to thank our sponsor before I dive into the
Speaker 1: madness that is USB connectors. All right, we're going to
Speaker 1: talk about the different ends of USB cables, which for
Speaker 1: a lot of people end up being the thing that
Speaker 1: confuses them or infuriates them the most, especially if you're
Speaker 1: looking for a very specific USB cable for a very
Speaker 1: specific device and all you're finding are mini and micro cables.
Speaker 1: I've been there, I live that life. It hurts. It's
Speaker 1: a bit of a puzzler. So let's start with USB
Speaker 1: two point zero and lower first, because all of those
Speaker 1: cables have similar connect A USB one point one cable
Speaker 1: is not gonna pull data the way USB two point
Speaker 1: ozho can, but they do have the same sort of
Speaker 1: end connectors that plug into ports. So we begin with
Speaker 1: Type A plugs and sockets. This is the big standard,
Speaker 1: the one that you would find on a typical computer
Speaker 1: pre USB three point zero days, so it's your typical
Speaker 1: USB port. The latest models have moved on. But if
Speaker 1: you probably are familiar with or own a computer that
Speaker 1: has your just standard USB two point oh style ports,
Speaker 1: these are the ones that have that big, wide plug
Speaker 1: for the cables and that have little holes on one
Speaker 1: side of them that when it slips into your computer,
Speaker 1: it's supposed to latch on a little bit so that
Speaker 1: the cord doesn't easily pop out again. But it's also
Speaker 1: tends to be the plug that everyone seems to try
Speaker 1: and plug in upside down first before they flip it
Speaker 1: around and get it the right way. At least that's
Speaker 1: my experience. I've worked with USB chords for years, and
Speaker 1: to this day, I will try and plug it in
Speaker 1: the wrong way first, probably because I'm not really paying attention.
Speaker 1: If I just paid attention and looked for the little holes,
Speaker 1: I could align it properly. But more often than not,
Speaker 1: I'm just jabbing away at a computer. You know, an
Speaker 1: expensive piece of property, like a caveman with a spear
Speaker 1: jab in a mammoth. That's me when you boil it
Speaker 1: down to its most basic level with computers, I'm not
Speaker 1: a proud man. I'm just a guy anyway. That's one
Speaker 1: of the features of these plugs. There's only one way
Speaker 1: you can plug them in correctly. You cannot reverse them.
Speaker 1: Type B plugs and sockets have a different shape than
Speaker 1: Type A. These are typically the side of a cable
Speaker 1: that you would plug into another device like a camera
Speaker 1: or a microphone in some cases, USB microphones, printers, scanners,
Speaker 1: that kind of thing. TYPEB socket is an upstrem socket,
Speaker 1: so that means it has to be on a peripheral
Speaker 1: because remember computer send information downstream, peripheral send information upstream.
Speaker 1: So your typical USB cable has a Type A connector
Speaker 1: on one end and a Type B connector on the
Speaker 1: other end. I remember my old blue Snowball mic has
Speaker 1: a standard Type B port on it. In fact, I've
Speaker 1: got a blue Snowball mic right in front of me
Speaker 1: right now. I'm not using it. It was used for
Speaker 1: a conversation I had online just before I recorded this podcast,
Speaker 1: and sure enough, it's got a tight B USB connector
Speaker 1: that square ish connector on the back of it. Now,
Speaker 1: let's make things a little more complicated. You also have
Speaker 1: micro style connectors for USB Type A and Type B connections.
Speaker 1: Micro Ports can be found on digital cameras, cell phones, smartphones,
Speaker 1: GPS units, and stuff like that. Then there are USB
Speaker 1: mini connectors which are actually largelarger than the micro connectors,
Speaker 1: and those can also be found on other types of
Speaker 1: cell phones, digital cameras, and that kind of stuff. So
Speaker 1: your mini connectors are slightly taller if you were looking
Speaker 1: at them from the end, Like if you ever had
Speaker 1: a cell phone that had a mini connector, it's got
Speaker 1: the ports are slightly taller, and the plugs are slightly taller,
Speaker 1: and they do not fit into the micro connector ports.
Speaker 1: Those are thinner, So a mini cable will not plug
Speaker 1: into a MicroPort, and a micro cable will not plug
Speaker 1: into a mini port. And that's the biggest problem I
Speaker 1: have is because well now it's not the biggest problem
Speaker 1: I have, because I've got a smartphone that has a
Speaker 1: USB C cable, adding a whole new plethora of options
Speaker 1: for me to mess things up. But back in the day,
Speaker 1: it was the biggest problem I had because I used
Speaker 1: to have a cell phone that used the one type
Speaker 1: of plug, and then I got a cell phone that
Speaker 1: used it different type of plug, which means I've got
Speaker 1: all these different cables, and invariably when I was going
Speaker 1: to charge my phone or I needed to grab a
Speaker 1: cable for travel that was more common, I would end
Speaker 1: up grabbing the wrong type of cable. You'd figure i'd
Speaker 1: have a fifty to fifty shot, or at least, you know,
Speaker 1: I would have more of the current type of cable
Speaker 1: than I did the old type of cable. But for
Speaker 1: whatever reason, I just had that amazing luck to grab
Speaker 1: the wrong one every single time. And there are also
Speaker 1: a few more proprietary approaches to USB connectors, particularly in
Speaker 1: the world of cameras, so certain brands like Kodak or
Speaker 1: Sony were using connectors that don't plug into anything else.
Speaker 1: The camera has a very specific port on it, and
Speaker 1: the plug that you have to use is related to
Speaker 1: that camera, or at least that brand of cameras. This
Speaker 1: is also incredibly frustrating for people who own lots of
Speaker 1: technology because if it were a mini or a micro
Speaker 1: that's a standard, if you lost the cable, it's easy
Speaker 1: to replace. If you lose a proprietary cable, you have
Speaker 1: to go back to the manufacturer typically and order an
Speaker 1: expensive replacement. Keep in mind, they were still using the
Speaker 1: USB standard. The underlying technology was the exact same stuff
Speaker 1: in all the other USB cables. It's just the plug
Speaker 1: that was different and the port on the device. It
Speaker 1: was a design choice that ends up forcing you to
Speaker 1: buy more stuff within a particular manufacturer's collection of products.
Speaker 1: I might be a little jaded on that, largely because
Speaker 1: I kept losing chords to digital cameras and it was
Speaker 1: expensive to replace them. So these days I just use
Speaker 1: my phone. It makes me so much happier not having
Speaker 1: to carry an extra thing around. Anyway, the whole thing
Speaker 1: sort of defeats the purpose of the universal connector if
Speaker 1: you ask me, but it does create that market for
Speaker 1: cords and cables, and only those companies or designated companies
Speaker 1: that license the technology can actually sell those products, so
Speaker 1: it's a money maker. Now. Next, you've got USB three
Speaker 1: point zero Type A and Type B connectors, plus the
Speaker 1: USB three point zero MicroB connectors. The basic Type A
Speaker 1: connector looks very similar to a USB two point zero
Speaker 1: Type A, except instead of it being having white plastic
Speaker 1: in it, it's got blue plastic in it. So the
Speaker 1: blue alert to that you're using a USB three point
Speaker 1: zero cable, or if you're looking at the port, that
Speaker 1: it's a port, So they look a lot like USB
Speaker 1: two point zero. It is backwards compatible with USB two
Speaker 1: point zero ports, so you can plug the USB three
Speaker 1: point zero regular type A plug into a USB two
Speaker 1: point zero port, but it's going to be going at
Speaker 1: that use USB two point zero speed. Rather than round
Speaker 1: pins which earlier USB connectors had inside them, the USB
Speaker 1: three point zero Type A has flat connectors which stand
Speaker 1: up to a lot of attachment and removals, so you
Speaker 1: don't wear out the port or cables quite as quickly.
Speaker 1: That's kind of nice. The type B USB three point
Speaker 1: zero cables look a little different than they are two
Speaker 1: point zero counterparts, so you cannot plug a USB three
Speaker 1: point zero type B cable into a USB two point
Speaker 1: zero Type B port, and that's because the connectors for
Speaker 1: USB three point zero have more pins, so they're wider,
Speaker 1: like they're more wide than the USB two point zero
Speaker 1: kind that actually looks like they almost have two plugs
Speaker 1: merged together if you take a look at them. And
Speaker 1: the ports look a little funky too, because they have
Speaker 1: this structure where it looks like it's two ports that
Speaker 1: have been merged together. It's because these connectors have more
Speaker 1: pins in them, so you can't just use a regular
Speaker 1: two point oh cable with these devices. The micro connector
Speaker 1: for a USB three point zero also looks different from
Speaker 1: the two point zero counterpart, so again you just have
Speaker 1: to deal with that. It's one of those things where
Speaker 1: the trade off to the new technology is that you
Speaker 1: have to get rid of some of the old stuff
Speaker 1: that had been universal before. And finally you have the
Speaker 1: USB Type C connector. So some cables have a Type
Speaker 1: C connector at both ends, so you've got if you
Speaker 1: have a USB C cable, it may have a C
Speaker 1: plug on both ends of it instead of having a
Speaker 1: Type A or Type B or whatever both ends or
Speaker 1: Type C. That works just fine. If you happen to
Speaker 1: have a laptop that has a C type port in
Speaker 1: it and you have a smartphone that has a C
Speaker 1: type port in it, then you can plug the two
Speaker 1: together no problem. Or if you've got a power adapter
Speaker 1: that is a plug and it has a C type port,
Speaker 1: then you can use it as a charging cable. That's
Speaker 1: what my phone's charging cable is. It's actually a USB
Speaker 1: C cable on both ends plugs into an adapter. You
Speaker 1: plug that into a wall, you plug the other end
Speaker 1: into your smartphone, and you charge away, and you get
Speaker 1: to do it at a really fast speed. It recharges
Speaker 1: very quickly that way, much faster than if I were
Speaker 1: to plug a USB two point zero to USB C
Speaker 1: cable into my laptop, because the laptop just can't transfer
Speaker 1: power at that same rate. So yeah, if I try
Speaker 1: to plug my phone into my computer, it does charge,
Speaker 1: but much more slowly than I would if I use
Speaker 1: the charge the charging cable. The cables will carry data
Speaker 1: at a lower transfer rate if you have them plugged
Speaker 1: into that two point zero style port, depending upon the
Speaker 1: type of connectors used. Obviously, if it's a C type plug,
Speaker 1: you would need an adapter, or you would need a
Speaker 1: computer that had C type ports. You can't plug a
Speaker 1: C type port into a USB two point zero port,
Speaker 1: it won't work. They also have a chip incorporated in them,
Speaker 1: the USB C cables do. There's at the end of
Speaker 1: the C cable on that C connector there's actually a
Speaker 1: microchip incorporated into the wire or the cable really, because
Speaker 1: the cable is a collection of wires. It has an
Speaker 1: ID function based on vendor defined messages also known as VDMS,
Speaker 1: and also a configuration data channel. So in plane speak,
Speaker 1: the chip gives devices more information about what they're connected to.
Speaker 1: And that's a lot about connectors. So let's talk about wires.
Speaker 1: What would a USB cable look like if you split
Speaker 1: one open, Well, it depends upon which version of USB
Speaker 1: you're working with, So if you're working with USB two
Speaker 1: point zero or earlier, if you split the cable open,
Speaker 1: you would find four wires inside of it, and normally
Speaker 1: those wires are color coded red, white, green, and black.
Speaker 1: The red and black wires are power lines. The red
Speaker 1: line carries plus five vaults in the black life acts
Speaker 1: as a ground wire. The white and green wires are
Speaker 1: the ones that carry data signals using non return to
Speaker 1: zero inverted or r ZI encoding. White is technically called
Speaker 1: DNS and green is technically d plus, and the D
Speaker 1: stands for data. A USB three point zero cable has
Speaker 1: some additional wires to contend with. You've still got the
Speaker 1: four that we just mentioned, and they still perform the
Speaker 1: same functions in USB three point zero. This is what
Speaker 1: allows USB three point zero to be backwards compatible with
Speaker 1: older USB protocols. But then you also have blue, yellow, purple,
Speaker 1: and orange wires. The blue and yellow are paired together
Speaker 1: as a super speed transmitter. Pair of wires, and the
Speaker 1: purple and orange act as a super speed receiver pair
Speaker 1: of wires. So these are those dedicated pathways for high
Speaker 1: speed data transfers. But Jonathan, I hear you ask, what
Speaker 1: about USBC cables. Do they have any extra wires? Pipe down,
Speaker 1: I'll get to you. Yeah, they got them. They got
Speaker 1: a lot. USBC has eighteen wires. It's probably easiest to
Speaker 1: go through these by the connectors they correspond with. So
Speaker 1: Connectors one and sixteen are ground wires, so they're plated
Speaker 1: in ten TN. They are ground for return power. Connectors
Speaker 1: two and seventeen are power cables, similar to what you'd
Speaker 1: find in earlier USB specifications, and they are red. Then
Speaker 1: you've got a yellow wire at connector eighteen. This one
Speaker 1: is a power wire for active cables designated as VCON,
Speaker 1: whereas the other wires are VBUS wires. All right, So
Speaker 1: that's one, sixteen, two, seventeen, and eighteen. Let's go back down.
Speaker 1: Connector three is blue and it's a configuration. Channel four
Speaker 1: is white and it's the D plus channel. Five is green.
Speaker 1: It's the D minus channel. That's just like USB two
Speaker 1: point zero. Connectors six and seven are yellow and brown.
Speaker 1: And correspond with the first of four shielded differential pairs
Speaker 1: for high speed data transfers. Eight and nine are the
Speaker 1: next two, and they are green and orange. Then you've
Speaker 1: got ten and eleven. Those are white and black, and
Speaker 1: then you've got twelve and thirteen those are red and
Speaker 1: blue connectors. Fourteen and fifteen are red and black and
Speaker 1: are sideband wires. And that's all of them. That's all
Speaker 1: the wires that are in the USB C cable. Now.
Speaker 1: The important thing to remember is that these wires facilitate
Speaker 1: powering a peripheral and allowing high speed data transfers, and
Speaker 1: it only works if you're using the right types of ports,
Speaker 1: cables and peripherals. So you've got to make sure all
Speaker 1: of these things are at the highest or the most
Speaker 1: recent version of USB in order to take advantage of
Speaker 1: those capabilities. Again, you only go as fast as the
Speaker 1: slowest component on the chain, and that's the skinny on USB. Ultimately,
Speaker 1: it's a story about several powerful entities in the computer
Speaker 1: industry getting together to streamline what had become an increasingly
Speaker 1: frustrating consumer experience. I think the solution is actually pretty elegant.
Speaker 1: It's complex, and it's a little difficult to understand. I
Speaker 1: didn't dive too deeply into the tech of it because
Speaker 1: to do so would have taken a lot more time
Speaker 1: to explain all the different fundamental principles. I will say
Speaker 1: that the switch to USBC has irritated some people because
Speaker 1: it's creating new connectors, so it means that you can't
Speaker 1: use your old cables for a lot of this stuff.
Speaker 1: That's part of the growing pains of technology. If we
Speaker 1: rely upon existing designs, we won't be able to enjoy
Speaker 1: those faster speeds or other features like power management and
Speaker 1: other improvements over time. Another when I got my latest
Speaker 1: smartphone that uses that USBC connector, I was a little
Speaker 1: irritated at first. I knew that I had to buy
Speaker 1: new USBC cables if I was going to go traveling.
Speaker 1: I couldn't just one of the billion USB minis or
Speaker 1: micros that I had because they wouldn't work. And I
Speaker 1: still don't have a computer that has a USB C port,
Speaker 1: so I only have that one power adapter that I
Speaker 1: can use. I don't have anything else that uses USBC
Speaker 1: right now, so I really only enjoy those faster speeds
Speaker 1: when I plug in the power adapter. But assuming I
Speaker 1: upgrade to current technological standards. I'm sure I'll be pleased
Speaker 1: as punch with the USBC, which will probably happen right
Speaker 1: around the time someone debuts USBD or whatever comes next,
Speaker 1: and I'll still be behind the times, and so it goes.
Speaker 1: That's it for the tech Stuff classic episode how USB
Speaker 1: Ports Work, which originally published on April twenty first, twenty seventeen.
Speaker 1: Hope you enjoyed that. Obviously we could do another follow
Speaker 1: up on there. USBC has been a huge thing over
Speaker 1: the last few years, and yeah, there are a lot
Speaker 1: of things to talk about when it comes to USB
Speaker 1: technology and how it has advanced over the years. So
Speaker 1: maybe I'll do a follow up episode at some point,
Speaker 1: But until then, I hope you are all well and
Speaker 1: I'll talk to you again really soon. Tech Stuff is
Speaker 1: an iHeartRadio production. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the
Speaker 1: iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
Speaker 1: favorite shows.