• Fester@lemm.eeEnglish
      46·
      11 months ago

      1998: That would be a waste of a perfectly good cable. Never know when you might need it, so it goes in the box with the others.

      2023: The fuck are all these cables for? I’ll make a meme… but only with one. Never know when you might need the others.

    • prime_number_314159@lemmy.world
      7·
      11 months ago

      The I²C bus on pins 12 and 15 is definitely a serial interface, and arguably each color is serial, even if they’re not… the traditional sort.

      It is quite amusing how many less ambiguous serial connectors they could have trivially chosen. PCI-E, ethernet (8P8C), SATA, SAS, HDMI, FireWire… the options are numerous.

  • Pantherina@feddit.de
    3·
    11 months ago

    Honest question, what do you use these ports for apart from VGA? I never used anything but VGA but these ports look the same.

    • AspieEgg@lemmy.blahaj.zone
      14·
      11 months ago

      They look similar but a VGA port has 15 pins and a serial port has only 9. Serial ports like this one were really common before USB was used. You would plug peripherals into it kind of the same way you use a USB port. Mice were probably the most common use, but you could plug a lot of different things into them.

      • jaybone@lemmy.world
        3·
        11 months ago

        Of course it is like USB since the S in USB stand for serial; Universal Serial Bus.

        I don’t remember if RS232 was plug and play or hot swap though. I think you might have had to boot with those plugged in. PS/2 I think you could? And of course USB you can. Good times.

        • TerribleTortoise@lemmy.world
          3·
          11 months ago

          Yes and no. They could be unplugged and replugged without a reboot. But also you’d have to manually configure the communication parameters of the port. So I hesitate to say “hot swap”.

      • blindsight@beehaw.org
        2·
        11 months ago

        Back when you had to manually configure your gamepad…
        Uniquely for each game…
        By looking up specific numbers in your gamepad manual.

        Kids have no idea how easy they have it these days.