How much time did you spend looking at the problem from the other direction? The industry have noted that the USB interface can be used for a lot of things that the older interfaces can not be used for. The industry moved from DC power in the wall sockets too, despite this not being compatible with all existing equipment. Sometimes, it is well worth taking a step backwards because you will then be able to take 5 steps forward. You are among the fraction of a percent who sees USB as a step backwards. The majority of users only sees advantages. So the industry, in their infinite wisdom, is making a lot of money by supplying what the customer wants.


As a consequence, there have been produced a huge amount of devices that don't need RS232 or IEEE 1284 or similar. And many of these new devices can - thanks to the USB interface - do new things that wasn't possible with the previous generation. Lots of people loves host-powered devices. Lots of people love the plug-and-play. Lots of people love the much, much higher transfer rates. Lots of people love a machine with maybe 14 identical connectors, instead of just one or two RS232 interfaces and a need for 9-to-25 pin converters and cables and straight and cross-over cables. Lots of people love that not only the electrical interface, but also the protocols, have been standardized. Lots of people love that they can now use a HUB if they want many connectors close to their keyboard or monitor. Or that they can use a single cable to transfer - concurrently - sound, key presses, mouse data, ...

Yes, the industry have really gone the wrong way, in their infinite wisdom. How can they have selected to move to an interface that the majority of users love, and where you don't have to set a number of straps somewhere on the motherboard or plug-in board to get the interrupts to match the relevant port address?

1) You have more choices than just USB if you don't limit yourself to laptop computers.

2) USB printers are not less reliable. Their MTBF are not affected by the interface. And the USB interface is most definitely capable of supplying the information to print. The only disadvantage for a hobbyist is that it isn't easy to send data to the printer from a non-Windows environment. But that is a completely different issue.

3) Steal bandwidth from the PC? What bandwidth? USB bandwidth? A PC can have many host controllers - each of which can manage its own bandwidth. And you can't really say that a USB printer - even if it relies on the PC to build the bitmap - does steal any CPU power from a recent PC.

4) If you don't like win-printers - how about selecting a printer that uses HP-PCL? You can do a lot of fun with a microcontroller and a printer that is using PCL. And you can also do a lot of fun things with a PS-capable printer. And you can still buy an Epson or maybe Oki Microline matrix printer with your favourite interface. So you complain that the $90 printer is too cheap, but ignores the existing printers that does exactly what they did 20 years ago.


Hire someone to come and fix your computers. There are no 2-second or 2-minute timeout. Not unless your machine or your OS installation is broken. I have transmitted TB of information where the PC have been either the source or the target, and not seen anything close to your troubles. Or maybe your software is broken?


If interfacing to a PC, I would normally get me a USART integrated into a cheap and nice microcontroller. They are excellent for interfacing between two different interface types.


Maybe you should buy a real computer instead of a laptop? A laptop is optimized to be small and easy to carry around. A statinary computer is optimized to be extendable, and to have a lot of connectors.
A professional laptop can normally be docked to a docking station.
Or look for PCMCIA/Expresscard alternatives.
Don't see problems all the time. See opportinities.


Of course there is - use PCI, PCMCIA, Expresscard, ... It might surprise you, but there are alternatives to USB.
You are as busy at finding problems with USB as some people were when they where using RS232 or the Centronics interface to network two computers.
It isn't the interface that is at error, if you try to abuse the wrong interface to solve something it isn't intended for - especially when there are alternatives.


Well, you have somehow "explained" that what people are already doing doesn't work. Strange then, that people are already doing it.

But then again - if you do select 12Mbit/s USB and try to send out a 45MBit/s stream, then you will obviously need an infinite FIFO. So what was wrong with looking at a processor that can handle 480Mbit/s? Yes - 8051 chips with that support are pretty scarce. But that is a limitation with the 8051 chips, and not something you should blame on the USB standard or the current PC architecture.

Everytime your 8051 chip doesn't interface well with something, you blame that other device. One reason that ARM chips have taken so much market share is that the manufacturers looks at peoples needs and then makes sure that the ARM chips are compatible with the devices people want to connect them to. There is nothing wrong with using 8051 chips for solving problems, as long as you realize that it has limitations, and that you can't blame the rest of the world whenever you suffer from one such limitation. Billions of dollars of USB-based hardware is shipped every year, so obviously USB does work. Don't blame the industry for betting on a winning horse. Instead consider how you can get some juicy piece from that huge pie.

Step one is probably to figure out what is wrong with your computers. Are your HDD working well, without CRC errors or sector re-reads? And no problems with page swapping? No old and and badly written OS driver that locks the machine for long periods of time in some critical section?