USB 2.0 (and Serial Ports on Computer onboard Yachts?)

I also thought that a primer on USB 2.0 (and the older USB 1.1) might be of interest to land and ship based customers (sail and motor yacht) of mine. Universal Serial Bus ( USB ) has become a very common connection both on devices such as Cameras, Printers, and Hard Disk drives - as well as on Laptop and Desktop computers. What gets yah on yachts a lot on your navigation computer is… the fact that most newer computers no longer have a Serial Port. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_port

[caption id=”" align=”aligncenter” width=”382″ caption=”9-Pin Serial Port Jack”][/caption]

Navigation computers often need a Serial Port to communicate with NMEA devices such as Radar and GPS … and Autopilot equipment. So on newer computers you often have to get a “USB to Serial” adaptor to allow these connections. There are such adaptors made for only one serial port, as well as ones made for high-end applications and for multiple serial ports, such as the ones made by Sea Level company:

http://www.sealevel.com/.

[caption id=”" align=”alignnone” width=”383″ caption=”Sealevel Model 2201 USB to Serial Port”][/caption]

So now on our way to check out the article - we see that it is very interesting to know about USB and its many applications on modern computers and in particular on sail and motor yachts. One thing that I’ve noticed is that older computers often have the older USB 1.1 connections on them. And I, like probaly other people, have a USB Hub from Belkin that is also USB 1.1. So when I plug in newer devices I get a warning message pop up telling me that this device would perform better/faster if it were on a newer USB 2.0 connection. Time to go buy hardware I guess. My newer computers have USB 2.0 and things seem to work great with that!

http://www.marinetelecom.net/usb_cactus_symbol_140_283.gif USB Logo

 

http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/article/10

USB 2.0
Author: Gabriel Torres
Last Updated: August 22, 2004

Both the Firewire and the USB allow you to easily install external peripherals to the computer, such as digital cameras, keyboards, mouse, printers, Zip-drives, CD recorders, hard disks etc, through a standardized connector available in the computer’s motherboard ( in the case of USB ) or through an extra board added to the computer (in the case of the FireWire, if you don’t have a high-end motherboard with this kind of bus).

Firewire (also known as IEEE 1394) is an external bus to connect external peripherals to the computer, similar to USB, which has as great attractive a high transfer rate: 400 Mbps (that is approximately 50 MB/s).

The USB Implementers Forum (http://www.usb.org), that is the group of manufacturers that developed the USB, has already developed the USB second version, called USB 2.0 or High-speed USB. This new USB version has a maximum transfer rate of 480 Mbps (approximately 60 MB/s), that is, a higher rate than the FireWire and much higher than its previous version (called 1.1), that is the version we have today in our computers and that allows the connection of peripherals using transfer rates of 12 Mbps (approximately 1.5 MB/s) or 1.5 Mbps (approximately 192 KB/s), depending on the peripheral.

(more at the link above…)

—
Alan Spicer Telecom / Alan Spicer Marine Telecom
http://www.marinetelecom.net
http://www.alanspicermarinetelecom.com
communications (at) marinetelecom.net
communications (at) alanspicermarinetelecom.com
a_spicer (at) bellsouth.net
+1 954-683-3426 +1 954-977-5245

This entry was posted on 8. February 2009 at 20:00 and is filed under General Computer onboard Sail and Motor Yachts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.