Serial Ports Are STILL Around!

The video opens by contrasting USB’s rise with the long history of serial connections, explaining that true serial ports, notably the 9-pin RS-232 style, were common long before USB became popular in the late 1990s. It then recounts how these ports looked and why they were designed with screws to secure the connector and prevent bending under use, highlighting the era when multiple devices still relied on this legacy interface. The host details the speed limitations of early serial hardware, with some devices managing only around 75 bits per second and others reaching about 115 kilobits per second, a stark contrast to today’s typical home internet speeds. The narrative moves through typical uses of serial ports in their heyday: dial-up modems, data syncing with early personal assistants like the Palm Pilot, and power supply monitoring in uninterruptible power supplies, all underscoring the practical, low-bandwidth nature of the technology. The piece also touches on broader industrial and home automation contexts, where serial was used to interact with smart home devices and base stations, driving reliability and simplicity over speed. Finally, the host emphasizes that serial ports persisted into modern times in specialized equipment and certain industries because of their robustness and low cost, even as modern PCs no longer include native serial ports, underscoring why a technically outdated interface still has a living footprint in the tech landscape.

Topics · technology history · hardware · computing · industrial-tech · embedded-systems