There’s a 25-year-old piece of PC hardware that’s still being used in even the most powerful gaming PCs sold today. Happy birthday to USB 2.0
Ah, birthdays. Love them or hate them, there’s no escaping the unwavering gaze of Father Time. Except in the world of computing, where most tech only sees a handful of birthdays before heading out to pasture. There are one or two exceptions to this, though, and this year sees the 25th birthday of USB 2.0—the universal and ubiquitous connection system that we just can’t seem to give up, even today.
The Universal Serial Bus (USB) is older still, as its very first iteration started to appear on computers around 1996. Uptake of the new port was pretty slow, though, and it wasn’t until 1998, when Microsoft released Windows 98 and Apple launched its iMac, that we started to see proper software and hardware support for it.
Since I’ve already said that it’s the 25th birthday of USB 2.0 (thanks to Heise for the handy reminder), it’s pretty obvious when it first launched. What made it better than the first version was the inclusion of a faster, 480 Mbps data transfer mode. It’s arguably the start of the whole naming mess that USB is well known for, as the organisation responsible for it all (USB Implementers Forum, USB-IF) decided that this superfast mode should be called High Speed.
Why is that a messy name? It’s because the much slower 12 Mbps mode in USB 1.0/1.1 is called Full Speed. Umm, isn’t ‘full’ faster than ‘high’ when talking about speed? Well, it would eventually transpire that the USB-IF is an advocate for not learning any lessons at all from mistakes, and we’d eventually be treated to the nomenclature farce that of USB version 3.0 (and that’s a whole ‘nother story).
The USB 2.0 specification would be tweaked a little more over the years, adding more types of connector designs and battery charging stuff. In terms of raw capabilities, it’s been surpassed by USB 3.0 and USB4 (yes, USB4, not USB 4.0), but grab any new motherboard off a retailer’s shelf and you’ll often still see a couple of USB 2.0 ports staring back at you. And it’s nearly always present in the form of a header, to be connected to the front IO sockets on a PC case.
As to why they’re still in use, it’s because they’re very easy to implement within a motherboard design. That peak transfer rate of 480 Mbps is very low compared to what you can get out of a USB 3.0 or USB4 port—not that Apple cared when slapping it on the iPhone’s USB connection—so the little sockets aren’t going to demand much of the USB controller that’s handling them; that particular circuit is usually found in the motherboard’s primary chipset.
Perhaps the one thing the humble USB port has been most infamous for over the years is the fact that the Type-A connector (the standard rectangular one) isn’t especially ‘universal’—unlike Type-C, which will work in any orientation, Type-A plugs only operate when stuffed into the slot just so.
Even now, after using the darn things for 25 years, I still do the try-it-three-times dance with my USB memory sticks. Try to stuff it—oh no, it won’t fit! Flip it over and try again. Oh no, it won’t go in! Flip back to the starting point and bingo, in it goes. Every. Single. Time.
By the tech standards of today, USB 2.0 seems very dated—it’s not especially fast and it doesn’t offer much in the way of power, but it’s not the only old bit of kit in your gaming PC. The SATA bus interface is also 25 years old, and the first iteration of PCI Express is hot on its heels, just three years younger.
Of course, the latter is almost never used in its 1.0 configuration, and most PCIe 4.0 and 5.0 systems will only drop to version 3.0 or older when switching to a power-saving mode. It’s a similar story with SATA, as your motherboard will almost certainly be using the 3.4 or 3.5 specification, and those young pups are just seven and five years old, respectively.
When it comes to genuinely old tech in your PC, USB 2.0 pretty much rules the roost. Part of me wants to celebrate this fact, because I like old stuff, but to be honest, I’d much rather see it gone and have USB 3.0 as the actual minimum port standard now. USB 2.0 won’t be around in another 25 years, but I reckon it’ll see out this decade. See you again in five years for the 30th anniversary, then.
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