When did USB ports become standard on PC's?

[Orrex]

I know that others have many more years of computing experience than I do, but I recall my first PC had a 20-meg hard drive that was about the size of a stack of four TV Guides and heavy as a brick.

It delights me that USB drives now comfortably store 8 gigs or more and are smaller than a cigarette lighter.


But when did USB ports start appearing on PC's? Our Dell, which we I believe we got in 2000, has two ports, but the generic PC I had before that didn't have any (not sure how much older it was, and I don't own it any longer).

[LeftyMom]

1. iirc, macs went all usb with the imac, pcs lagged a bit. I'm thinking '99 or so?

[Orrex]

6. Makes sense

That would fit with the ages of our respective computers.


Thanks!

[CatholicEdHead]

7. Yep, the iMac Bondi Blue made it mainstream

But I remember some old Dells that had 2 in the back when they were not used very much. I think they were Pentium 75 or Pentium 90 machines that could barley boot NT 4.0.

[supernova]

2. I love my little

8 gig Gigabank :7

That's big enough to transfer just about anything I need.

And my new printer for my MacBook is through a USB connection. That is new. It used to be these little devices, never major stuff like printers.

When did they become standard?

I wanna somewhere around Y2K, but I could be wrong.

[Orrex]

4. We bought a new system about two weeks ago

I was surprised to learn that the printer connection is USB, instead of the familiar (to me) parallel port of old. The times they are a-changin'!


Flash drives of various sizes are right up there among my most favoritest gadgets of the past few years.

[quip]

8. Now that you are warming up to USB, Apple is starting the wireless revolution

The new http://www.apple.com/macbookair/">Macbook Air doesn't even have a CD/DVD drivebay-- it uses others' wirelessly. Chords are on their way out.

[TommyO]

3. Ask and ye shall receive

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB

USB was introduced in 1995 and made its first major appearance in the original iMac in 1998

[Orrex]

5. Ah! Thank you!

I shouldn't have been so PC-centric in my thinking.

[TommyO]

16. Not a problem

Until two years and two months ago, I was PC-centric as well. My PowerMac G5 is now just over two years old and still going strong with it's USB, Firewire 400 and Firewire 800 ports. Firewire is great for external hard drives as it's throughput is higher with less CPU usage.

[Aristus]

9. My brand-new PC lacks a hard-disc drive. It just has a CD-ROM drive.

Now I can't use any of the discs I've got a ton of stored info on. :grr:

[Sentath]

15. HUH? Oh

you mean a 3.5 in floppy disk drive. They have USB external models for 10 or so.

[TreasonousBastard]

10. Not till Win98, and not really then...

Win95 had no USB support at all, and Win98 didn't really do it too well. Because of interrupt and address problems going back to the original PC, USB keyboards and mice tended to blow out some other devices, like Palm synching.

Firewire was pretty neat, but Apple was the only one on board with that but they went USB, and SCSI kinda got dropped off along the way, leaving USB as the surviving standard for connecting peripherals when XP got it together.

[DarkTirade]

11. My old computer, a P-133 didn't have them. I can't remember if my next computer did.

It was an AMD 400. I had a little PCI card that had two USB ports on it for when I needed USB, but I don't remember if I took it out of the 133 to put in the 400 or not. :)

[Taverner]

12. When Macs made them their standard interface

Jobs may be kooky, waiting to get cancer treatments after all the so-called natural remedies failed - but he knows how to market

[Deja Q]

13. Naah, he just makes guinea pigs out of end users.

:evilgrin:

(Gates is no better, who is, but think about it...)

[youthere]

14. Hell, most of them don't even come with a standard dial-up port anymore.