all-purpose peripheral port?

[dpopiz]

I've always thought it would be a good idea to have a sort of firewire-type port that had enough bandwidth to handle transmission of data for all periperals on the computer (mouse, kb, monitor, speakers, etc.) And then the expansion cards would have no ports; they would recieve data from the computer, process it in whatever way they do, then send it back out to the computer and have it all routed through the all-purpose port. things that absolutely need uninterupted data streams could be given a constant allocation of bandwidth.

do you think this might me feasible?

 

[Sahakiel]

I think, um, been there, done that?
There's been various incarnations of your idea, USB being the most common, today. The biggest problem with the idea is that by the time a standard is set, the maximum throughput for data transfer is usually too low.

 

[dpopiz]

I'm talking about something where, like I said, the expansion cards do not have ports themselves, they just process data and then send it to the all-purpose port controller
also usb and others are only for mice, kb, etc, not high-bandwidth devices like monitor and speakers. I'm thinking of a port that has enough bandwidth to support *all* peripherals.

 

[Evadman]

Thats some serious bandwith. Your talking 500+ Megs per second.

 

[dpopiz]

yeah I know it's tons of bandwidth, but boy would that be cool, and the mac people who hate "the mess of scary cables" would love it; ONE connection

 

[Shalmanese]

It would be too expensive to have an all purpose cable as some things dont need the high bandwidth the thing provides.

 

[Turkey]

I don't really understand how the "one connection" comes in... right now I've got a monitor, kb, mouse, printer, speakers, a steering wheel and pedals, CF card reader, Intel Digital Movie Camera base, PDA base, and microphone hooked up and sitting on my desk... do you mean a common form factor for all these connectors? So that in the back of my PC there'd be potentially 11 identical ports? And that doesn't even include the LAN, or the fax/modem and TV connections that I'm not using. Probably the biggest technical obstacle to this is the I/O hub... if you have 16 peripherals that communicate input and output thru a single I/O processor, then that processor has to be mega-speedy. But the biggest obstacle is probably that its just a bad idea. There's a reason a speaker connector has a much simpler connector than a monitor - it doesn't need it. And these companies are always trying to reduce cost... bigger connectors = more cost. Yeah the Mac people would love it, but since 96% of the world aren't Mac users...

 

[dpopiz]

hmm I still think it might be a good idea for the computer of the future...although, yes a hi-res video signal of course requires many times more bandwidth than any other peripheral I can think of, so maybe it could just be a connector for everything except video. audio could be streamed with some lossless compression, and wouldn't use much bandwidth

 

[CQuinn]

There are already USB speakers out there. So I would call those hi bandwidth.

AFAIK most of the display work of my monitor would not be considered hi bandwidth either. You may be
applying the need to have a lot of speed for games to do 3D rendering with the actual data that gets sent
to the display.

Another thing you are not considering is that the reason the ports are on the individual expansion cards
is so they don't have to take up internal bandwidth transferring data to the ports.

 

[dpopiz]

real usb speakers? I thought that 'usb speakers' just use the usb for controlling, and the digital audio signal is actually transfered through sp/dif or some other digital audio interface

 

[Evadman]

Most USB speakers just use the USB for power, not sound transmision.

 

[mAdD INDIAN]

<< Most USB speakers just use the USB for power, not sound transmision. >>



I have a Microsoft Digital Sound System speaker set (great speaker set!!) that has a USB connection and a standard audio connection.

I can only connect it via USB and it can play music. This means that a computer does not need to have a sound car in order to play music. I don't know how it works, I'm guessing the speaker system does the sound processing on its own.

 

[Demon-Xanth]

The major downside to a universal port is that all signals get mixed. Including analog. Your monitor's signal would be forced to compete with the sound card and keyboard for bandwidth, and in my case there's a ton of other connections as well.

What's connected on my computer externally:
Audio out (stereo)
Audio out (PC speakers)
Mic in
TV tuner composite video
TV tuner composite audio
TV tuner antenna
Network
Monitor
Another monitor
Yet another monitor
Keyboard
Mouse
Joystick
Sometimes a different joystick as well

Piping all these into a single connector would make a cable nest into a cable bush.

 

[dpopiz]

actually, my idea is that you could have a single connector for computer peripherals, so regualr ports would still be used for standardized non-system interfaces such as ethernet, audio in/out, tv etc

 

[CQuinn]

And who/what makes the determination of what is or is not a computer peripheral?

I would consider ethernet the closest thing we have to a standard system interface, considering
all the ways it has been expanded over the years.

Where does firewire fall into that scheme? Half the items on that bus are computer peripherals
(HDs to DVD-ROMS), a lot more are AV devices (Digital camcorders and the like), and the rest
are devices like the iPod, which can be turned into multi-functional tools fairly easily.

 

[Shalmanese]

Also, you have some things which are latency critical and some which are not. Having a low latency cable for everything is expensive.

 

[454Casull]

The MS speakers probably have a built-in DAC.