Attaching Things

by Bob Seidel

I was away for a week and had a chance to visit some lovely and memory-invoking places. We started with a wedding in Washington DC at the National Museum of Women in the Arts and ended with an evening rooftop 40th birthday party in Manhattan, looking out over the gorgeous New York skyline. We were also able to spend a few days in upstate New York where we lived for many years - it's beautiful this time of year.

But the nostalgia was heavy when we drove past the old IBM Kingston site, now shuttered for many years. IBM Kingston was where I spent the beginning and most of my career. But even the name of the road through the site has been changed; what used to be the friendly "Neighborhood Road" has now become "Enterprise Drive" as part of a failed attempt to attract other companies to occupy the old buildings. Bitter nostalgia for me - if anyone of my faithful readers has a memory of IBM Kingston, please email them to me and perhaps I will combine them into a column in the future.

Attaching things to your PC is pretty straightforward these days, but I thought it is a good time to summarize, to indicate what is old (read: to get rid of) and new, and to further elaborate on some of the rules and procedures.

Parallel printer ports - these are the old-style thick cables with 25 pin connectors on the end. Originally intended to plug in a printer, they were misused for lots of other things, such as scanners. But since each PC had only one parallel port, the device manufacturers came up with really strange ways to daisy-chain devices and none of these worked very well. So if you have a parallel port printer or scanner, it's time to upgrade. Many modern PCs don't even have parallel ports any more - an issue you should think about if you buy a new PC and have an old printer.

Serial ports - ditto. The 9-pin or 25-pin serial port was used originally for external modems and later the first mice. But again this is old technology and you should consider upgrading. And who uses modems any more?

SCSI: these ports looked like parallel ports, but were intended for high-end scanners. Ditch these too. And even though still in use, those old round mouse and keyboard connectors are on their way out rapidly. All replaced by...

USB. USB is the new standard for connecting devices, and works very well. Almost all devices are the newer USB 2.0 standard, which is sufficiently fast for almost all uses - including scanners and external hard drives. Did you know that all USB devices are "hot plug" - meaning that you can unplug the device at any time, even if the PC is running? Well, you can. But you should check the little icon in the system tray that is called "Safely Remove Hardware" - if your device is not listed, go ahead and unplug it. If it is listed, click on it and select Stop to ask permission from Windows to finish using the device and free it up - this is especially true of external storage devices.

Many people don't realize that they can add more USB ports to their PC. All you have to do is buy a USB hub - this is in effect a splitter - it uses one USB connection to the PC and creates four or seven new ones. Don't worry about performance - that is not an issue. You can also use a longer cable to add these new ports physically away from your pc. This enables you to, for example, have a scanner and printer on a work table to the side.

Whenever installing USB devices, always read the User's Guide that comes with it. This is because some devices require you to plug the device in first, and some require you to load the drives from the CD first. You can't count on either way, so look.

Bluetooth was here and gone. Originally intended as a kind of wireless USB, it never caught on. Now it's mostly used for cell phone headsets.

And finally there is Firefire. This interface was used for very high bandwidth data requirements, such as video. It is still in use, although only miniDV video cameras have Firewire any longer. Newer video camcorders have internal hard drives and attach via USB, or use removable DVD disks. But Firewire (especially the newer versions) are still the fastest connections you can get.

And finally, external SATA hard drives are starting to appear, as I discussed a few weeks ago. Expect to see eSATA become the standard for external storage devices in the future.

(Bob Seidel is a local computer consultant in the Southport - Oak Island area. You can visit his Website at www.bobseidel.com or e-mail questions or column ideas to him at bsc@bobseidel.com. For specific inquiries, please call Bob Seidel Consulting, LLC at 278-1007.)